The Golden Knight
by Countess Verona Dracula
Summary: On an unorthodox business retreat, Pepper ponders her inscrutable boss and the man he's becoming - and what that means for their future, which now unfolds in a series of incidents that leave them both achingly vulnerable and utterly at peace.
1. The Golden Knight

**Disclaimer** - I own nothing. If I did, my boyfriend would have to make good on his promise to let me cheat on him with Tony. Frequently.

**Summary** - Pepper ponders her inscrutable boss and the chinks in his golden armor that he fights so hard to conceal, in the setting of an unorthodox company retreat.

**A/N** - After long days of obsessively reading and rereading the various fics of this booming Iron Man community, and wishing that I could join in the creative efforts of such talented people, I have decided to dive back into the world of Fanfiction. My absence has been long, and as such, I hope that this endeavor is not too forced, and is rather on the whole an enjoyable experience.

Rated Teen for language throughout, and the general inappropriateness that is Tony Stark.

The camp described here is a real place; its name is Camp Scherman, and it is to all the wonderful people there and at the other Girl Scout camps I've attended that I dedicate this.

* * *

_The Golden Knight_

"Potts, did you ever go to summer camp?" Tony asks suddenly, in-between something and God knows what else, judging by the soot and grease that obscures half his face.

There are a lot of things about him that are easy to forget, because there's so much about him that's unforgettable that some things just slip through the cracks - such as the fact that he's pushing forty, that he's one of the most brilliant engineers of his generation but doesn't know his own damn Social Security number, that he lost both his parents in one fell swoop and nearly lost his own life not so very long ago. That at any given moment, if his math was wrong, he could still lose it. And it's at that moment, when he's halfway in and halfway out of the room where his assistant who endeavors never to forget anything sits, that she remembers all of those things, all at once, without really knowing why.

"Once," she answers. "I hated it."

"Good," he shoots back, already leaving, because he never seems to stay. "We're going."

For one shiny moment she thinks he means the _we_ she'd refused to discuss weeks before, but it has the evanescence of a shooting star, the quick brilliance of his smile, of light on the suit that has already earned him the nickname the Golden Knight. The Invincible Iron Man, the other papers say. Would they still say that if they knew about the shrapnel that lurked beneath his skin, shrapnel given life by his own careless genius?

No, she knows he doesn't mean _we_. She knows that her Golden Knight is off chasing windmills again and that it's time for her to go reel him in, to remind him that he can only dream the impossible dream after he's gone over the budget proposals for next quarter. To remind him that she's not his Dulcinea, that there's shrapnel beneath her own skin that she has no reactor to save her from, only good old-fashioned tough skin. She feels them draw closer to her heart every time she watches him stand up from a chair, because she'll never forget watching him lurch to his feet and trundle towards her and demand a hamburger after months apart, as if she hadn't cried every night that he was away and sometimes when she passed by his empty office. As if she hadn't cried for him even before he was spirited away. She'll never forget how she sent a Don Juan to Afghanistan and got back a scarred Don Quixote. She's not sure which incarnation frightens her more, leaves her more uncertain of who _she_ is. Because if she doesn't have to hold herself perpetually at arm's length, out of his grasp, then what does she have to do? The dance has changed, and no one bothered to tell her the new steps.

Well, right now she has to figure out what this next wild fantasy is, so she closes her laptop and puts her heels back on, because she's feeling fragile right now and they make her feel safe, and follows him down to the garage. She shuts down her unexpected train of thought on the way there, but the first sound she makes when she finds him is still one of despair. Not because the specs he's working on aren't the ones R&D asked for (though that's what he assumes it is and she does nothing to upset his world the way he does hers on a daily basis), but because she can see the bruises spangling his shoulders from his latest tilt at windmills with RPGs.

"What was this about a summer camp, Mr. Stark?"

"We're going. All of us. You, me, Rhodey, hell, maybe even Coulson, that guy needs a break too. A few other people from the office. It's called an 'office retreat'. They're quite popular, you know, Potts."

"Forgive me if I think the little Girl Scouts will be a little puzzled by the big hairy men who show up on the first day."

"Not that kind of summer camp, you pedophile. It _used_ to be for little kids but parents are less inclined to send their kids away because of sickos like you, so they offer it up for other stuff now, like business retreats. Which I believe we all sorely need."

"I believe that what we sorely need is for you to go over the numbers for next quarter and at least draw a smiley face on those blueprints R&D sent over so that those poor engineers stop tearing their hair out."

"What about this poor engineer? I want s'mores, dammit!"

"Then go make some on the stove! And _don't _burn the budget proposal while you do, or the guys from accounting might go suicidal."

"Potts, half the _flavor _of a proper s'more comes from wood smoke, which is only produced by a campfire. _Don't_ even think about it, dummy." He points threateningly at the suddenly perky robotic arm. "And you're only proving my point, you know. If the engineers are tearing their hair out and the accountants have gone suicidal, now is very much the time for a company retreat. And a hell of a lot of s'mores."

"I'm not even talking about this until you do what I asked." She says, holding out the folder and refusing to look at him as he draws nearer, because she knows if she looks into those coffee eyes she'll see too far in.

Tony takes the folder, glances at the budget proposal, draws a smiley face on the blueprints, and hands it back.

"There. Now, I was thinking we could all leave next Friday after the workday is over, take a bus up to this place in the San Bernadino mountains, spend Saturday and part of Sunday there, and be home that night. Come on, Pepper, we wouldn't even be missing any work. Don't you want to stay up late singing songs and telling ghost stories?"

She wants to scream, partly at him for taking her literally when she asked him to look at the numbers and draw a smiley face on the blueprints, partly at herself for not knowing he'd do just that, and partly at him again for going and changing the rules on her and not bothering to leave her a memo. She really wants to, too. It would feel so good to scream until her lungs hurt and then turn and leave without telling him why, so that he could be the one caught in an unending state of flux. She wants to scream so he'll finally ask her if she's okay, so she can tell him that she's not.

But Pepper Potts doesn't scream. She never does, not when it really counts. She calmly unsheathes her BlackBerry and asks him who he wants the memo sent to. He names off a few specific names and just lists the department in some cases, until by her mental tally he's invited about thirty people. She promises to drop off a list for his final approval before she leaves for the day and she's about to walk away when she sees him wince and raise his hand to massage the area around the arc reactor.

"Tony?" She asks, her own heart clenching.

"I'm fine." The tension in his frame unwinds after a moment and he gives her that shooting star smile. "See? All better, mom."

"What was that?"

"Nothing. It just hurts sometimes. I'm fine, Pepper. Honest."

She wants to ask him more. If it hurts the way she hurts when she looks at him as he's bent over his worktable and oblivious to the world. But the words won't touch her lips, the way his won't. She must not have been careful enough to hide her thoughts, because soon his eyes cloud too and he steps forward.

"Here, give me that folder again."

A little part of her relaxes as she does, and mentally she notes that looking distressed and abandoned is a good way to get him to do his work. Then he hands back the folder and sees that Tony Stark has decided to draw a penis next to the smiley face on the blueprints from R&D.

"Anthony Edward Stark! What the hell is this?"

"You said those engineers needed cheering up! Trust me, it's a guy thing. They'll love it. And it's proof to you that I'm perfectly fine."

"It's also proof that you're unprofessional, immature, and - " She stutters to find a third damning word, because suddenly all of the other ones she used to use (drunk, horny, etc.) don't fit anymore.

"Come on," he grins. "You know if I was anything else, you'd be out of a job."

And maybe that's what really scares her. That as he's growing up, he just might be outgrowing her. That look must be on her face again, because he reaches out and rests a hand on her arm.

"Really, Pepper. I'm more than _fine_. I'm the Invincible Iron Man."

As she walks away and pretends as he pretends that she doesn't seem him rub his chest again, she whispers: _No you're not._

And the fact that neither of them is, is what really frightens Pepper Potts.

* * *

Next Friday, the selected thirty who are partaking in this bizarre little field trip are all lined up outside of Stark Industries' main office, looking more like they're about to be carted off to Auschwitz than to summer camp. That's because all of their traditional guises have been stripped away. There are no more business suits and ties or skirts and pumps. There are mandatory jeans, t-shirts, scuffed up back-packs. They eye each other like wary animals, made cagey by the sudden upheaval of their world.

Tony, the little bastard, looks perfectly at ease, of course. He'd probably be perfectly at ease even if he was dropped into a den of lions naked as the day he was born. He'd already have a plan, too. Pepper hates him just a little in that moment, not just because she's totally out of her comfort zone but because when the bus arrives and he triumphantly claims the back, she follows not because he asks her too (although he does) but because of the force of a habit so strong that it hasn't been broken by the upheavals that swirl around Tony Stark on a daily basis. She wonders if love can be considered a habit. The one time she dared to broach the subject with him, he simply said that love was a chemical addiction. Like alcoholism, she'd added, and that had been the end of that.

But it wasn't. The question was never whether or not she loved him, but whether or not she _could_ love him. For years it was the faults that worried her. Now it was the chinks in his golden armor - that tantalizing vulnerability that made her wonder if she could be strong enough to love him, to protect him, the way he really deserved. If he'd always be there for her the way she deserved.

"Hey, Rhodey, what was that song about the birdie you taught me that one time?" _He_ shouted from beside her. And to her horror, he soon had the entire bus of serious businesspeople chanting about a little bird with a yellow bill, whose 'fucking head' was smashed by the end of the song. She decided to bury her face in her BlackBerry rather than listen to the engineers - who, sure enough, absolutely loved Tony's penis gag - start making obscene and dorky jokes that she only half understood. She'd only have signal for a little while longer, and she meant to make it last.

"Potts, turn off that damn phone. I mean it. We are here to focus on s'mores, embarrassing stories, and possibly some midnight skinny dipping. If I catch you with that thing I'm throwing it into one lake and you into the other."

"There's two lakes?"

"Honor and Promise. You know me, I like things over the top."

"Oh? So which lake is the BlackBerry going into?"

"Promise, because I promised I'd do it if you didn't take a freaking break for once in your life."

"And why am I going into Honor?"

The eternal know-it-all just shrugs. Because that's the only one left, he mutters, but she senses that's not the real reason. She turns her BlackBerry off. Moments later, Tony is goading Rhodey into chanting out some other nonsensical (and highly inappropriate) marching song, and she is watching this child trapped in a man's body and wondering what his real childhood had been like. He'd probably never been to summer camp before. He hadn't done a lot of normal childhood things, as he'd revealed piece by piece in his sudden confessions. He'd never chased an ice cream truck or been in a school play or asked a girl to prom. And what had passed for his childhood had ended all too soon, with the destruction of his family and his ascendancy to the throne of Stark Industries. It had ended a second time not so long ago, when Obadiah Stane tried to kill him. So she wasn't surprised, really, when she stopped by the mansion on some Saturdays to 'take out the dry cleaning' and saw him sitting on the foor in front of his plasma TV watching Looney Tunes and eating Cap'n Crunch. For years she complacently accepted all of his paradoxes, but she couldn't be complacent anymore because he wasn't, and she found herself wanting to shake answers out of his inscrutable smile more and more often. That maddening, beautiful, damning smile…

The trip on the bus was shorter and rowdier than she'd expected as she watched her normally professional fellows devolve into a crowd of frolicsome twelve-year-olds. She couldn't quite bring herself to join in, but she had never been good at joining in. Standing back and organizing, yes, but joining in? Not so much. Not for lack of wanting. So when everyone rushes off the bus, enchanted by the special magic that is Tony Stark when he's flying high, she follows at a more sedate pace, wishing for her heels, because they give her the illusion that she is on even ground with her pseudo-boss. If acting like a colossal child protected him from the real world, then her Jimmy Choos protected her from him.

God, she hates him as she loves him.

To Tony's great disappointment, no s'mores are scheduled for tonight. They eat dinner in an echoey mess hall and, as if its high school all over again, she's drawn to sit at a table filled with other women, where they giggle and gossip about the other men in the room, who are continuing with their chant about the yellow bird. Strangely, Pepper has never been a pariah here, despite her strange proximity to Tony; in fact, some of these women have point blank asked her what it takes to get into his bed before, as if she's the respected gatekeeper of his bedroom. A heart of steel, she'd said once. But even steel - like iron - has its melting point, and she's realized over this last week that she's reached hers, that she can't even look at him anymore without wanting to simultaneously kiss him and kill him, without wondering which action would change their world more, without feeling the abyss that's yawned beneath her feet since - since -

She's so caught up in what she's feeling that when the counselors announce that it's time to pick groups for the cabins, she instinctively goes to Tony's side.

"Uhh, sorry Potts, but girls aren't allowed. They've got cooties, you know." He's eyeing her like cooties are a visible problem and she's got several smack in the middle of her forehead. _**You're **my problem, dipshit_, she wants to say.

She starts. "Not a single innuendo? You're off your game, Stark."

"You'd never be an innuendo, Pepper." He murmurs, in his rich voice, so low it's intimate, too intimate.

"True," She says. "But I'm not your Dulcinea either."

And she walks away before either of them can say anything else.

* * *

The next day they're woken at six, and the first thing Pepper thinks when she opens her eyes to the sound of the counselor's too cheery voice is that Tony is not going to be happy. He hates waking up, regardless of what time it is. It's because morning is the time of day when you have to face everything - what happened the day before, what's about to happen. She's watched him wake up before, watched him stretch and smile and gradually start piling the layers up, one by one. He touches the arc reactor first, to assure himself his heart is still beating. He starts making cracks about having wet dreams about her again. He asks where his Cap'n Crunch is. He whines about going to meetings. And with everything he says, everything he does, she watches him assimilate the parts that make him Anthony Stark, the way the machines in the basement assemble the armor that makes him the Invincible Iron Man.

But it's not him, she's beginning to realize. What's really him are the chinks in the armor - the shrapnel that necessitates the reactor, the lost childhood that makes him whine after Cap'n Crunch, the lack of intimacy that brings on the liquor and women. And the more and more he reveals those chinks, the more and more lost she feels, because the real Tony Stark just might be even more unforgettable than the one who went to Afghanistan months ago.

They're being woken up at 6 for what Pepper can only describe as an exercise in insanity. There are several small camp stoves set up around the circle of cabins, and each tired road warrior is given only one utensil, and asked to make a pancake.

"Feel free to partner up or barter for a different utensil," One of the counselors calls. "This is a great exercise in teamwork and negotiation!"

"Potts!" is all Pepper hears, and before he even said it she knew he was going to ask for her. "Make me a pancake!" He grumbles when she reaches his side.

"That's hardly negotiation, Mr. Stark."

"Make me a pancake _please_."

The counselor had only given Pepper a piece of tinfoil. Tony had a spatula. She thought she just might slap him.

"Tony Stark, I'm going to lose all semblance of respect for you if you can't make yourself a goddamn pancake."

"NCA!" a nearby counselor calls, approaching her.

"What?" even Rhodey, the master of military acronyms, was confused by that one.

"Not Camp Appropriate." The beaming blonde, who in another lifetime Tony would've already bedded by now, wags her finger at Pepper. "I'll have to take that tinfoil, now."

Pepper gapes in astonishment as she has the audacity to take it directly out of her hand. "How else am I supposed to get breakfast?" Her voice rises in rage.

"Negotiate." The counselor shrugs. "That's the point of the exercise, isn't it?"

She's about to wheel on Tony and blame his stupid whims for all of this, but when she meets his eyes they are unexpectedly kind.

"I'll make one for each of us."

She doesn't even have to negotiate, and she thinks it's funny that the two people most often praised for business acumen are failing miserably at a counselor's test. She tells him as much and he laughs, pouring the batter onto the hot pan and shaping a rough circle with his spatula.

"If you want, I can flip it when it's ready." She offers.

"Believe it or not, Potts," he pauses and flips the pancake perfectly. "I'm not completely helpless."

"Do you actually know how to cook?"

"Of course I actually know how to cook! I make a breakfast that puts Denny's Grand Slam to shame."

_Why?_ She wants to shout in his ear. _Why is there so much you refuse to share with me?_

He does share the pancakes, but she's not really one for conversation during breakfast. He's too busy laughing at Rhodey's sadly failed pancake, which he had to make with tinfoil, to notice that she's staring daggers at him. Or, worse, he notices but does nothing.

The rest of the day is taken up by various camp activities that have somehow been warped to develop the virtues of business - leading a blindfolded partner around a playground to demonstrate the necessity for clear communication, canoe races for further teamwork building, and so on. One of the counselors nervously offers an optional workshop on dealing with sexual harassment in the workplace, but Tony just laughs it off by saying that if there's anything sexual going on around his office, no one's complaining. When his eyes land on her, she assume he's looking for a rebuke, because she swears he gets off when she yells, but there's an entirely different look in his eyes. One she's never seen before, one that makes her want more than ever to find out who this new Tony is. Who the real one is.

Before she has time to notice, it's sundown, and it's finally time for a campfire and some s'mores. The counselors retreat as everyone takes a seat and begins their search for the perfect marshmallow.

"How do you take yours, Pepper?" He asks her.

"Lightly toasted, with an even gold and brown color. Let me guess, you take yours- "

"En fuego." He grins, watching as the tender white puffball is immolated by the fire.

And she wants to say something tender to him then, something that says she knew he'd like it that way, because she's starting to figure out the real Tony, but she can't really think of anything. So she settles for making sure she has a pair of graham crackers and a slab of chocolate already waiting for him when his marshmallow is perfectly roasted.

"Look out for yours," he points out. She glances back and sees that it is in fact burning.

"That's okay. You can just have a double-decker."

And when she gives him the second marshmallow and meets his eyes, Pepper Potts realizes she could live forever without saying anything to him, as long as she could keep doing things that made him look so touched. Then, as is so typical of him, he does something unexpected.

"Meet me by Lake Honor after everyone else has gone to bed."

She's too intrigued to say no, although her better judgment screams against it. She and Tony, alone in the wilderness after dark, and with her feeling so uncertain and him acting so uncertain? But she's physically incapable of saying no where he's concerned. She loves him too much.

So she waits until everyone else has wound down for the night and retired to their cabins, including Tony, who makes sure to catch her eye before he goes. She takes her leave of the others too, but instead of going inside when she reaches her cabin, she circles around it and heads for the dirt road that leads through the majestic oaks to the big placid lake named Honor. It sits on the very edge of the camp grounds, and beyond it seems to lie the edge of the conceivable world. By moonlight the far shore is only a dim imagining, and she waits there in the warm night air for Tony to appear.

Before long he's tracing the same path she took, and her heart clutches in her throat, the same way she imagines his does on those rare occasions when he says it hurts. He's dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, and although she's seen him in less (far, _far_ less) it seems almost indecent with her in her shorts and sneakers and tank top, and no one around but the man in the moon, so she searches for a scrap of decorum in the darkness.

"You wanted to see me?" She says, as if he's just summoned her to his office.

"Uh, yea. There's no easy way for me to say this…"

That statement is a prelude to so many things in the movies: I'm letting you go. I don't feel the same way. I'm seeing someone else. I'm gay. I'm pregnant. I love you. He takes too long deciding on which one, and she's drowning in the moonlight that's more revealing than the harshest light bulb.

"Look, it's just, ever since I suggested this trip, you've seemed, well, off. Not yourself. Missing a few screws. Take your pick. I wanted - I wanted to ask why." He's uncertain, and that's because he's bullshitting her so badly for his motives in coming out here that he can't even look her in the eye. But, now that she was staring down the barrel of the gun herself, she finds she can't say it easily either.

"Tony, why did you want to take this trip?"

He walks away from the road, further onto the shore of the lake, where upended canoes lay like beached whales. She follows him.

"I'd never been camping before - not willingly, that is." He says with a wry tone that always indicates Afghanistan. "It seemed fun. Innocent. A nice way to spend the weekend. Aren't you enjoying yourself?"

She ignores the last question in favor of everything he leaves unsaid - that there hasn't been enough peace in their lives since his unwilling camping trip, since he announced to the world that he was a self-styled superhero, since Nick Fury and SHIELD burst onto the scene. That there has never been enough innocence in their lives. And she's tired of always having to read between the lines, to peek into the chinks, in search of the real Tony Stark.

"Look at me," She says at last. "I've been off since you asked about this trip because right at that moment you asked me - I couldn't help but think that that was something the old Tony never would have asked to do. And it wasn't a bad thing, it was just new and different and there's been no one to give me a debrief on what's been going through your head since you came back, and suddenly I feel like _I_ don't know who I am anymore, because for the last few years the one thing I could always count on in some weird twisted way was you, and if I can't figure out what's going on behind your eyes I don't know if I can function anymore, and it's not just because I'm your assistant and it's my job, it's - it's - "

"Pepper, Pepper, hush, it's okay - " He's reaching out for her, but she takes a step back, because there's one more thing she has to say.

"I need to know, Tony. I need to know what's behind the mask."

He reaches out once more, and this time she doesn't take a step back. He takes her hand by the wrist and places it on the arc reactor, and even through the hum of the space age machinery she can feel the beat of his very human heart. Invincibility and vulnerability, all in one place. All in one man.

"What's behind the mask is the other half of you."

And all at once, even though it shouldn't, everything makes sense, and she's drawn to rest against his chest, and even though it was him that was taken away for so long, she's the one that's finally come home.

He holds her like that for a long time, running his hands up and down her back, breathing in the scent of her hair, until at last he asks:

"Who's Dulcinea?"

She laughs a little, and replies: "Dulcinea is Don Quixote's fair lady. She's never actually present in the book: she's just this impossible image that he has built up in his mind, this beautiful, virtuous, nonexistent lady to whom he dedicates all his victories. I've - I've known ever since you came back that your feelings towards me had changed. I knew that I was part of the reason you wanted to be better. But I couldn't stand that you didn't share that with me openly. When I said I wasn't your Dulcinea, what I meant was that I didn't want to be someone you kept on a pedestal and idolized from afar. I want you to let me in, Tony. I want to fight side by side with you. I - "

" - love you." He finishes, before she can even hesitate, and when he says it he says it for both of them.

Then he starts to walk backwards, drawing her with him, until the cold water of the lake is lapping around their ankles, and then their knees and thighs, until she's up to her chest and she fears that soon she won't be able to touch the bottom. But he puts his arms around her waist and lifts her up as he carries her, so that she's floating or flying, take your pick, towards the edge of the universe, and she feels so secure with his warm body pressed against her, because invincible and invulnerable are two different things, and she's glad that he's one and not the other.

"I swear to you by this lake, Virginia Potts," he whispers in her ear. "That you'll never be my Dulcinea."

And then he _finally_ kisses her.

* * *

Pepper is sad when summer camp is over, but not sad that they went. When she looks at Tony she can see all the things she fancies everyone else forgets - that he's pushing forty, and there's still shrapnel in his heart, and he's lost so much, and he really needed these two days in the wilderness to relax and forget. He wants everyone else to forget that he's not invulnerable too: everyone but her, because on the way home he reaches out and takes her hand, and holds it for the entire ride, and through that simple touch says more than he ever has before in all the years she's worked for him. I'm lonely. I need you. I love you.

From that day forward, whenever Pepper Potts sees the morning headlines proclaiming the latest victory of the Golden Knight or the Invincible Iron Man, she no longer wonders if they'd still write that, if they knew the real Tony Stark. It doesn't really matter so much then. What matters is that despite the glint of his golden armor, she sees the chinks, and through them sees the real man underneath. She _sees_ him. And she loves him, more than anyone ever has or ever will.

And if that's not invincibility, she doesn't know what is.

* * *

**A/N**- Well, after a fevered day at my computer, I am done. That came out more introspective and crazed than I thought, and I pray it makes sense to anyone who's not me! Review and let me know if it did. Cheers!

- Verona


	2. The Hot Rod

**_Disclaimer-_ **Still don't own him. But I'm working on it…

_**Summary**-_ Two weeks after the promise Tony made Pepper in the mountains, he takes her out on a date, and, for the first time in a long time, finds himself in over his head_._

**_A/N-_ **What can I say? You guys are persuasive. And I'm pretty much a whore for your reviews. I've decided to expand this into a longer fic (how long I'm not sure, I've got at least three more ideas after this one). The connections from chapter to chapter will be looser, I should say, than in a normal fic; in my head, they're almost more like individual ficlets that all have the same story arc.

Rated teen for language, Tony Stark, and some suggestiveness.

I dedicate this installment to my Darling, who gave me my first comic book without realizing what a monster he was about to create.

* * *

_The Hot Rod_

Blue, he thinks, will work for their bedroom. Light blue on the walls. Blue silk sheets the color of that dress she wore at the benefit. But, then again, Tony Stark likes red. Red cars, red superhero suits. A certain woman with red hair. Maybe he'll have a second room right next to their ordinary bedroom, a red room for those nights when what he really wants to do is make her scream his name and not whisper it.

But then when they have children, she's going to want the room next to theirs to be a nursery. Could he have kink and babies? They could just blindfold them. Hell, why even do that? What would be wrong with seeing their father express just how very much he loves their mother? Then maybe he wouldn't have to do that whole birds-and-bees thing with them…

To hear the thoughts of Tony Stark in these moments - and there are men who would give both their arms to know at any given moment what genius is whirling behind his eyes - one would think that it's the day of his wedding, or at the very least a moment when he's quietly contemplating the ring he intends to give to his intended. The truth is, he's standing in his room in slacks, socks, and nothing else, preparing to go on his first date. Not just any first date, either: his first date with Pepper Potts.

He should probably be considering which shirt to wear, but instead he's drumming his fingers on the surface of his dresser and staring off at nothing in particular and building an entirely new house for her in his mind. Because he would, if she gave him half a chance, build a whole house around her, a house filled with all the colors that suited her best, a room for her every mood. He'd let her design her own office space, exactly as she'd want it, her little organizer's dream. He'd get her the nicest kitchen anyone ever had, a built-in spa for the mandatory breaks he's going to demand she takes. But he won't hire a maid or a cook, no, because he knows she loves to do, and be, and live. And that's one of the things he loves about her, because he's always six or seven steps ahead of himself and never quite in the right moment. It's what makes him a brilliant engineer and military tactician. It's also sort of what makes him a lousy human being.

"Sir, in order to be on time for your rendezvous with Miss Potts, I'd suggest that you be ready in no more than five minutes." Jarvis's voice, so disconcerting to others, is a welcome jolt back to reality for Tony. Of course, mere seconds later he's six steps ahead again.

"Thanks. Hey, I've got a question - "

"I have only the answers you've programmed me with, sir."

"Please. I know you spend all day on Wikipedia. Which pet name suits Pepper best? Is she a honey or a babe?"

"I'd imagine that this is a matter of personal preference. However, I must admit that Pepper doesn't seem like the kind of woman one calls 'babe'."

"I think Pepper's quite a babe," Tony grins, and with that smile twenty years melt away and he's a teenager with his first Playboy again.

"Forgive me if my taste in women is quite different from yours, sir."

"Hey, I'm not the one whose hard drives are crammed with internet porn. You really need to get a hobby, Jarvis."

"In order for those files to end up on my hard drive, someone had to put them there. _Anthony_."

"…it was a dry spell."

He glances in the mirror, and by God he's blushing. Shit. He hadn't seen himself blush since he was an too-young underclassman at MIT and he came to the gym in a tank top and compression shorts, not realizing that a second pair of gym shorts usually went over them. Jarvis, thankfully, has developed some sense of tact, and he breaks the silence first.

"Shall I send for Mr. Hogan, sir?"

"No, thanks. I'll be driving her myself."

"So I'll be sending for the Audi, then?"

The Audi that he had once tried to cram with every month of the Playboy calendar. Tony felt the weight of his entire suit settle in his gut for a moment before his mind ran back six steps and gave him a better idea.

"I'm taking her in the hot rod."

"Sir, it's never been on the road."

"That car has been begging for the road for months. It's perfectly restored, from the paint all the way down to the last bolt. I wouldn't even dream of it if I didn't know it was safe for her."

"As you wish, sir. I'll be waiting in the garage."

"Creeper."

Finally, he chooses a red dress shirt and leaves the top two buttons undone, not out of voyeurism but because he's suddenly too hot. He stands there eying himself in the mirror and panics a little. He takes a breath and starts moving six steps ahead again and prays that panic stays one step behind.

He goes down to the garage and goes to the red hot rod and slides into the seat. He just sits there with one hand on the key for a moment before he turns it in the ignition, and when he finally fires up the car it startles him, and then when it settles into its ready purr it makes his heart kick up a notch.

"Hey there," he murmurs, to whom he's not sure. He likes the feel of the car humming all around him - he's always had a thing for machines - but that's not what's really making everything inside of him go tight with emotion. It's her. Warm and living and human, unlike everything else in his world; in a way, unlike him, with his heart that depends on metal to keep beating.

"Best of luck, sir." Jarvis calls as he begins to pull out of the garage.

Tony Stark doesn't even hear, lost in a daze of blue eyes and red hot rods.

* * *

Pepper Potts is surprised when he pulls up to the curb of her condo at the wheel of one of his prized possessions, and he revels in the look on her face. It's tough for him to surprise her pleasantly, and before now he's never really tried. But he likes that face - the lifted eyebrows, the tiny part in the lips, the look in her eyes that words will never capture. Her lovely expression of surprise is framed by soft ringlets and she's wearing a black chiffon skirt (yes, Tony Stark knows what chiffon is, knows it very well because it's one of his favorite fabrics on a woman) that sways around her knees as she approaches the car. Her blouse is a shade of green that has him thinking about the walls of their dining room, and how they'll have Rhodey over for dinner once a week.

"Those things actually work?" she says in the present moment, when they're still on the precipice of their first date.

"Did you really think I spent hours ruining your carefully planned schedules just to redo the paint job?"

"I wouldn't put it past you," she laughs, and slides into the seat next to him. "Hey." She smiles more shyly, and after a breath's hesitation she leans over, inviting him to kiss her, an invitation he gladly accepts, because there have been so few opportunities to do so since that night in the moonlit lake that he feels like he's starving. Still, he limits himself to a soft one. As she pulls back, her hand happens to brush his where it rests on the stick, and he can't suppress a shudder.

"So, where are we headed?"

"Well, we've gotta get out of Malibu, that's for sure. The last thing we need is a mob. I was thinking we'd go south down PCH for a while. There's this restaurant I know of that's built right on a pier where we could get some great seafood, and then…" He laughs, and some of the tension leaves his shoulders. "I know we're both a little overdressed, but how about a movie? There's some fairly decent crap out. And if it's just too bad we could always make out."

"Sounds great to me."

"Oh, and if you're going to give me feminist shit about splitting the bill, get out of the car now and save yourself the embarrassment of me physically preventing you from paying a dime when we get there."

"I'm dating a billionaire for a reason, Mr. Stark."

God, she's actually flirting. Pepper Potts is flirting with him. The car almost scares him again when he starts her a second time and pulls away from the curb, back out onto the main streets. He misses a stop sign and doesn't even notice because his mind is already whirling away to the day when he can call her Mrs. Stark right back.

"This car is really, really nice. I'm almost willing to admit it was worth the countless migraines." She comments as he starts heading for the highway, where he can't wait to stretch his hot rod's legs and show off just a little, show her what she'll miss if she ever dares to leave him. "Have you ever driven it before?"

"Nope. This is my first time." He grins crookedly at her, and she just shakes her head.

His head is still sprinting ahead of him. He's never driven it before because he's never had an occasion too, and of course he was consciously trying to set this starry night in a different galaxy than all the others, but his mind was so busy drafting and redrafting the architecture of the home he'll build around her that he hadn't considered carefully enough what it would say to Pepper. She was cautious to a fault, and he doesn't want to frighten her off because he's too far ahead.

Of course, Pepper is always six steps ahead too - that's why she's the best damn assistant in the world - but her six steps are different increments than his. She thinks six board meetings ahead, six press conferences into the future. She's probably not planning their Barbie Dream Home - she's probably spinning the press releases and drafting reassurances of their continued professionalism when the inevitable leak in the dike springs. He needs to tiptoe instead of bound, or he risks losing what is already doing as much to keep his heart going as the reactor is. Because that's why thinking ahead sort of makes him an asshole - when he's taking those leaps and bounds that further technology and rewrite textbooks, he tends to trample on the people in his immediate surroundings. Particularly a certain assistant, whose insistence on details he'd once termed 'short-sightedness' in a rather annoyed tone.

"Tony, the light's green."

…as if he needed the sea of honking horns to drive home the point that he's an inconsiderate bastard. What's funny, though, is that Pepper's tone isn't at all annoyed or frustrated, which is strange, because he never thought she'd pass up an opportunity to harangue him. He mumbles apologies and shoots out of the turn lane onto PCH, where he revs up the car more and can already feel how she's going to hug the curves.

He wishes he could hold Pepper's curves against him forever and apologize for what was really his short-sightedness. When the media has been calling you a genius from pretty much the moment you were born, it's tough not to think you're always right. He wishes there was a way to make up for lost time, to seek forgiveness for the unforgivable. Instead he settles for reaching out and taking her hand and just holding it as he drives, as he has a dim memory of his parents doing. It's the only happy memory he has that involves both them and a car.

"I'm gonna need all the help I can get with this, Pepper." He says. She squeezes his hand as she replies:

"This is the one area where I don't think I'll be much help, love."

He squeezes her hand back, but he can't speak around the knot in his throat the last word tied. _Dammit, Stark, when did you turn so freaking sentimental? _

"I'm going to call you that from now on." He informs her, and although she's only admitting that they're both up a certain four-letter creek without a paddle, he's never felt more safe in his life.

* * *

The food and the view on the pier are superb, and the movie they see afterwards is just sufficiently crappy enough to be a good date movie. They mock it the whole way through, and it only increases their enjoyment. Well, they mock it until Pepper rests her hand on his thigh and then he turns her head away from the big screen to kiss her, thoroughly, the way it's his God-given right to kiss her. The rest of the movie, and the majority of the credits, is spent making out as shamelessly as two horny teenagers. He loves that Pepper, prim Pepper who always wears her hair in a bun and not so long ago wouldn't even dance with him, is practically in his lap and spilling the popcorn and kissing him without holding one ounce of herself back. It's not _that _novel for Tony to behave like a horny teenager, and usually he derides himself for it, but when she does, it's sexy as all hell.

They have the propriety to leave before the real teenagers come in so they're not counted as the trash that needs to be swept out, and once they're in the cool night air again they start to mock the movie more.

"God, that entire thing was unrealistic. They really don't know how to make movies anymore." He bemoans.

"Says the man who parades around in a metal suit fighting bad guys. And is that a hint that you're into old movies?"

"Why yes, yes it is. See? I've got this date talk down pat. Throw down a couple of interesting tidbits and just wait to reel you in with them." He pinches her chin and she giggles - yes, Pepper Potts _giggles_ - and shoves him away.

"Well, which old movie is your favorite?"

"I'm sorry, I can't tell you that until we're in the car. The truthful answer to that question is quite a blow to my masculinity and I'd like you to be the only one to hear it."

"Well, what's the fake answer?"

"_The Guns of Navarone_."

"Ahh, yes, nice and manly." They're in the car now. "And the real answer?"

He takes a deep breath and launches on what is almost more embarrassing than that time she found him in a hotel pool in Vegas sitting on an inflatable raft in nothing but his socks and tie, drunk as all hell and singing Stairway to Heaven at the top of his lungs. Yes, Pepper probably knows more about him than anyone, but he doesn't think he's ever told anyone this before, and he loves that she wants to know, that she's waiting with the same breathless little smile she wore when they finally broke apart after the movie, a smile that says he'll be hearing about this until the day he dies. He loves that telling her everything could come back to haunt him, because it means she'll be there to do the haunting.

"_Gone With the Wind_."

Tony Stark's face nearly matches the color of his hot rod as he pulls out of that parking lot, and Pepper Potts doesn't sound like she intends on drawing breath any time soon. She's laughing like he's never heard her laugh before, and that alone is worth the shame of those first three minutes. After that, though, the conversation takes an entirely unexpected turn. They sit there together and as she draws out of him his reasons why Scarlett O'Hara is the most perfect woman ever captured by celluloid and how Rhett Butler should be every man's ideal. What was left delicately unspoken, and yet undeniably present, was that the qualities they named could so very easily be applied to them: the willful redhead with a sharp temper and an eye for business and the dark-haired, debonair cad who made money off of war until he decided to join in the fight for the dying Cause. They pushed, they pulled, they said and did things they didn't really mean, but everyone knew they were meant to be.

They say nothing about the ending.

"One day, we'll have to watch it together." He promises softly. They're holding hands again and he runs his thumb in an endless circle over the back of her hand.

The trip goes on in comfortable silence for quite some time, but it can't last forever, and before they know it they're in Malibu again. Instinctively, Tony wants to drive home to his mansion, but for once in his life he has the decency to think of someone else and he turns in the direction of her condo instead.

"Take me to the mansion." She says softly when she realizes where they're going.

It makes Tony's stomach feel like lead again. All day he'd been so busy thinking six steps ahead that he hadn't stopped to consider the end of the date and all it could mean. If he had been reluctant to consider giving their children the birds and the bees talk, preferring to more bluntly introduce the subject, it was because his own introduction to sex had been similarly coarse. His father had hinted once or twice at sitting down and 'having a talk' around the time of his graduation from MIT, but in the end he never got it. He went out and got drunk and laid instead. Part of him blames his fear of intimacy on that, as if there would've been some undertone in the trite euphemisms of a father awkwardly trying to initiate his son into the mysteries of life that would've given the whole gig away.

Still, he heads in the direction she asks, because he's Tony Stark and he doesn't turn down sex. Right? Is that even what she's offering? It can't be. This is Pepper. It wasn't what he offered when he kissed her in the movie theater. But her hand is on his thigh again and it's the most uncomfortable he's ever felt with a woman. She's looking at him and he doesn't know what she expects: he can't just fuck her because it's Pepper, but he doesn't know if he can make love to her because it's him. He could imagine it earlier, in a blue room in a house he'd built just for her, but that was when he was six steps ahead and now that he's in the moment he has no idea what to do.

They reach the mansion and head inside, and for a moment they stand there in the dark foyer. He can just see the outline of her body and he reaches out and pulls her close and just holds her, and hopes that she knows it's an apology and not an invitation, an apology for all the ways he hurt her before and all the ways he fears to hurt her again. She leans back from the embrace and combs her fingers through his hair and kisses him once, twice, softly, so softly it makes him ache. She looks him in the eye between the kisses, and holds his gaze after the second one ends.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know if I can do this."

She drops her hand and steps back a bit, further into the light. "Why not?"

"Well, for one thing, I've heard that you're supposed to wait until the third date. And, for another," He reaches out and puts his hands on her shoulders, and a fine tremor runs through him and he feels it. "Jesus, Pepper, you make me feel like a virgin all over again. I don't just want to leap ahead and get on to whatever comes after that, because whatever comes after that is the part I've never stuck around for and it scares me a little, living in the moment like this."

He's terrified that at any moment her face is going to become hurt or disappointed. He compensates for his oversights with improvisation, and this is one gamble that _has _to pay off, because if she walks away he'll never move forward again. He'll remain trapped in this moment forever, remembering how she slipped like water through his clenched fists and remained a figment of an imaginary blue room. But her face doesn't become hurt or disappointed. She smiles instead and takes his hand.

"Come on, Tony. Let's go to bed."

She'd taken the liberty of leaving an overnight bag here when he first asked her out on the date, she tells him, and she takes it with her when she goes into the bathroom to change. He changes into his pajama bottoms and decides to forgo the shirt. He's praying that she's not going to emerge in a red teddy and decide to take him by force, but instead she comes out in her own sweats and tank top, with her hair pulled back in one of those fluffy elastic bands that girl's soccer teams use. As she crawls into bed beside him he stares at that band and imagines their daughter playing soccer, and him buying the referee off to make sure that the calls always go her way.

"Do I really need to teach you how to cuddle?" She sighs when he remains sitting after she's laid down.

"You just might," He mumbles, sliding down to lie facing her. "I've never done this before."

"I figured," she says, reaching out and resting her hand on the small of his back. "To tell the truth, I don't get much of a chance to either."

"It's nice."

"Yea, it is. The whole night was wonderful, Tony, I don't want you to think otherwise. I knew from the moment you showed up at my door in that hot rod that it was going to be a wonderful date." An impish grin spreads across her face that makes her freckles dance. "Although I'm not gonna lie, I do look forward to a date that ends with me meeting your _other_ hot rod."

And all of the tension rushes out of both of them in one hearty laugh.

"Pepper Potts, that was the worst pun I've ever heard! There's no way in hell you're getting in my pants if you keep that up! I swear, I'm almost ashamed to be in bed with you." He pauses a moment and draws closer to her. "But not really."

Because he knows that the reason he never had this before was because he was ashamed, and the feeling he has now is nothing like it. Especially when Pepper reaches out and rests her hand on the side of his face. As he looks into her eyes, his mind makes one last desperate dash forward.

"It'll definitely be blue."

"What will?"

He moves even closer to her and kisses her, and promises to tell her some other time. He watches her as he falls asleep, and for once in his life, Tony Stark's whirlwind brain slows down and really looks around. And what it sees leaves it at peace.

* * *

**A/N** - I was pretty worried that I wouldn't captured the same feel of the first installment in this part, but I actually think it came out pretty well. I think what's coming up next will be even better, so stay tuned!


	3. The Handshake

Disclaimer- Nope, still not mine.

**Summary** - In which a simple handshake leads to much more.

**A/N- **Wow, I just looked at the number of reviews I've received, and I must admit that I'm shocked and honored at the response this little fic of mine has gotten. I haven't been enjoying writing this much in quite a long time, and I'm very grateful for the support.

I'm not sure if it shows up, but if those of you with author or story alerts see something that says I've edited the first two chapters, don't panic. There was a typo in _the Hot Rod _and I wanted to take the 'fin' off of _the Golden Knight _because that is, obviously, no longer the end. If those changes didn't show up, please ignore my mindless babble :)

* * *

_The Handshake_

It doesn't happen the way they expected it to - because they knew it was going to happen, even if they didn't talk about it because talking about it would cause it to happen. They expected it to happen because someone catches them out on a date, or taking a cruise on his yacht, or because one of the personnel on his jet blabs about that time he was trying to persuade her to join in the Mile High Club with him. Tony has even caught Pepper drafting various responses to the ways it could happen.

"I just want to be ready," She replies defensively when she realizes she hasn't closed the laptop in time. "When this happens, I want the damage to us to be minimal. The world is full of incredibly stupid people who'd look at this as a weakness, and they aren't going to exploit it if I can help it."

In another time he might have made fun of her for being so anal, but this time he just sits behind her on the bed, his arms around her waist, and presses a kiss into her hair.

"You're my own little superhero, Pepper Potts." He says, and she melts.

They're definitely surprised that no one notices the way they melt frequently in each other's presence, but they both have excellent poker faces (they once played a legendary game together when someone else was late to a vital meeting). There are rules, of course, to prevent these faces from slipping. No undue touching around the office - especially no kissing. Kisses leave both of them in a mindless puddle on the floor and they don't want the janitors to be the first ones to find out.

Because of that rule there's a whole new level to what they do at the office. When she brings him his hot coffee it's with an even warmer smile. When he finishes his reports on time, before she's even asked for them, and sets them on her desk he does it without a single complaint. The light touch of her fingertips on his wrist when he's bent over a blueprint in his office doesn't just get his attention, it says that she misses him, the him she has back at the mansion. And when he comes to tell her that he's on his way home, the tired look in his eyes isn't just because he's bored and he needs to do something with his hands, it's because he's sick of the bullshit of the world and he needs to sit down with her and her honesty around the dinner table.

There are days when she's convinced that they're both just going crazy.

When she gets back to the mansion, a careful hour or so after he's already left, it always takes them a moment to debunk the programming that won't let them acknowledge their feelings - but then every day since the retreat has been an exercise in that. Tony especially has a hard time with it. There are days when he spends most of his time looking at her from across the room, just looking at her, and then all of the sudden he'll walk over to her and put his arms around her and hold her so tight she can't breathe and tell her he loves her. They startled Pepper, at first, these random outbreaks of affection, but now she looks forward to them. There's one night in particular when she's standing over the stove making spaghetti and meatballs (it's the night before the incident, but they don't know that yet) and he walks over to her and wraps his arms around her from behind and actually lifts her off the ground for a moment.

"Tony, the sauce - "

"It'll be fine. Just let me hold you."

She turns around in his arms so that her head is against his chest and they just stand there in the kitchen with the sauce burning quietly behind them.

"I'm probably not supposed to be doing this, huh?" He murmurs. "I'm probably supposed to behave like a civilized ape and leave you alone until you're done cooking."

"Does it seem like I mind?"

He takes her point. The sauce is nearly lost but she salvages it in the nick of time, and he stands behind her while she does, watching her silently, marveling that she is in his kitchen at all. When they sit down on the couch and eat their spaghetti together she can feel their newness like a mist on the air. She knows exactly what he meant when he said he felt like a virgin again; at first the effect of his words had been cheapened a little by the sound of Madonna's voice in her head but now she feels it too, all over her skin, the sense of newness and chance and fragility.

Even though he still asks if they can order out for a pizza after the spaghetti is gone and she still rolls her eyes and lets him, everything about them is different than before. She's never seen him so openly unsure, but now that she's finally convinced him to take off the mask she sees the play of emotions over his face like the reflections of fireworks on the Pacific. And he's never seen her so tender before, but now that he's finally letting her take care of him she doesn't have to fight for every inch anymore. There are times when they lay silently, chastely (well, for the most part) beside each other and the sound of their fear fills up the bedroom. She dreads the intrusion of the real world's cynical laughter on their paradise. He fears the harm his own weapons can do in the hands of others. They steel themselves, because they know it's coming.

And it happens because of a handshake, of all things.

* * *

Fall is coming on and with it the start of the fiscal year. It's a little sad, really, how excited everyone around here gets, as if it really is a new year celebration. But they let themselves get swept up in it anyway, working even harder than usual to finish proposals and negotiate contracts and put the finishing touches on the latest designs.

This time it's especially busy, especially exciting, because October 1st will mark the beginning of the first full year of Stark Industries' new lease on life. When Tony stuck to his guns about his new policies and set in motion plans to work on more defensive technology and phase out weapons, he gave notice that anyone who felt they fundamentally disagreed with the company's new direction could leave with no hard feelings. Some of them did, but for the most part his characteristic passion has already precipitated a change in everyone around him, as it always does, and they are taking to his new ideas with zeal. His engineers haven't had such a hard time keeping up with him in years, and they love it.

It's a challenging time for Pepper too, because suddenly there are new contacts to be made, new feelers to be sent out in search of like-minded individuals to help Tony on his latest quest. There are many new people to woo and impress, and they're putting on their most dazzling smiles to do so, and it helps that they're filled to the brim with secret happiness inside.

It doesn't help that a lot of people might disapprove of that happiness, should it ever become un-secret.

There's a point in late August when Tony's new policies and Pepper's new contacts cross paths in one of the boardrooms at Stark Industries' HQ. She's managed to contact another engineer who recently wrote a theoretical treatise on the applications of technologies similar to Tony's arc reactors, and now she's sitting in a room watching as they pour over equations and books and blueprints, and wishing she could understand half of what's flying between them. They're more similar than she expected - neither of them can stop moving for longer than thirty seconds, and the same breathless air of constant excitement and discovery follows them like a signature cologne. Tony is still the better looking of the two by several leagues, and Pepper takes her own quiet joy in that.

He's shining today, her Tony, and when he looks up to her from the blueprints and asks if she could go and get a folder for him from his office, a normal enough task for his assistant, he says it with that brilliant smile that she knows is really meant for his girlfriend. When she brings back said folder, he takes it from her and then reaches out and shakes her hand, putting his free hand on her elbow and smiling again.

"Thanks so much, Pepper, and I know I'm running into the time you allotted for the interview with the Wall Street Journal but if you could just tell the reporter I'll get there as soon as I can - "

She loves it when she's flying high, and it shows in her face and she squeezes his hand once more before letting go.

"Of course. I'm sure he'll understand."

Meanwhile, the other engineer has paused and stands there looking at the picture the two of them make. A slow smile spreads across his face.

"So the two of you are more than just boss and assistant, huh?"

He doesn't say it lewdly - in fact his tone seems more playful than anything else. Both of them still freeze in their places, a surer giveaway than even the handshake had been, and Pepper quickly leaves to check on that reporter while Tony goes over some of the finer points in his argument a few more times, weaving a mental minefield a mile wide in hopes of distracting his new colleague from what he's just divined. Pepper, for her part, is relieved that the reporter is from the Wall Street Journal and will confine his questions to the coming fiscal year.

But both of them know that the game is up.

* * *

Within a week of that fateful handshake, it's everywhere. The other Stark Industries employees have their act down pat - they've seriously considered making a motivational poster lauding the virtues of the phrase 'no comment' - but that doesn't stop their internal gossip. When did it happen? How long has it been going on?

Pepper is ready to send the email the day it happens, but Tony won't let her until he sees the article in the National Enquirer claiming that they've been casual lovers since she started working for him, and that she threatened to quit if he didn't give up his other playthings. Then he helps her write a carefully worded press release confirming that Tony Stark has indeed been romantically involved with Virginia Potts for six weeks now, that they are very happy, and that they respectfully ask to keep that happiness private. He knows that Pepper wants to deny it, because that's what they instinctively teach people at Stark industries - but a long series of denials and 'no comment's is exactly what kept them apart for so long, and that's why he won't let her deny it now.

"We have nothing to be ashamed of, love." He says. "I want the world to know that."

"You're right. I should have every right to flaunt the fact that I've caught the most eligible bachelor in the world."

"Speaking of flaunting, shall we finally go on a date in our own backyard instead of driving through half of California in search of privacy?"

"I don't see why not."

They find a nice restaurant in Malibu, one Pepper always wanted to visit. She looks ravishing in red and he looks sharp in his business clothes, and when he catches sight of them in the mirror of his car he can't really blame the world for its fascination. They are one damn fine looking couple.

It's less understandable when the outdoor garden where they choose to eat is quickly surrounded by snapping cameras and even one or two brazen shouts for attention. They both try to ignore them, but within minutes what was once a comfortable evening is now only forcedly so, because battling to remain comfortable means that you're not. Finally, Tony pushes back from the table and stands to face the uninvited cameramen, an action that only whips them into a further frenzy.

"I get that you guys are some of my biggest fans," he says. "And as such, I take it I don't need to remind you what my night job is. If you're a big enough fan to know what that means, you'll leave now out of respect."

You'd have to live under or a rock or very, very far underground not to know that Tony Stark has a suit at home that takes out tanks. The brave (read: very stupid) ones stay to snap one or two more pictures before they, too, make themselves scarce. Tony sits back down and rubs his forehead with his fingers for a moment before Pepper takes his hand.

"You've always been my superhero, too, you know."

"I know," he smiles, but it's not the smile that lights up all of Malibu.

The days that follow are by no means unpleasant, but they are not as carefree and open as the ones preceding the handshake were. He doesn't hold her just for the sake of holding her anymore; he holds her because he knows the lions are at his door.

Then the board calls a meeting.

Ostensibly, it's about the coming fiscal year, but they crunched the numbers together, and they know that the figures are high enough to make even the crotchetiest of the members happy. They should be receiving flowers and bottles of Moet, not an invitation to a beheading.

They go together, because she always goes with him to the board meetings (mostly so she can pinch his thigh when he gets out of line or allows his attention to wander), but when they reach the door she's turned away as gently as possible. They tell her that the board wishes to speak to Tony in private and her cheeks nearly match her hair as rage fills her from toe to crown. She'd once fancied that the board might respect her a little more than they even respected Tony, and now that it's out that they're 'romantically involved' she's little more than his whore. She could choke on the irony that they haven't even made it past second base yet.

"For the sake of not making a scene, I'm going to go along with this." He says. "But rest assured that whatever they say inside that boardroom is making it back to Pepper anyway."

He kisses her on the cheek and then he goes inside.

* * *

He's in there for too long and she can't bear to wait, so she goes back to his office and tries to get things done. Half an hour later, she gets a text message from him asking her to meet him back at the mansion as soon as she can. She's a big girl, so she doesn't let the fear get to her. She calmly finishes a few more things before she gets in the car and goes to hear the news.

She finds him sitting on his bed - on what she thinks of as their bed, now - surrounded by magazines. At first she assumes they're all from the recent weeks, but a closer examination reveals that they span a period of time going back to when they first met. He doesn't own them out of vanity - although he takes pride in one or two of the stories being true - but out of the necessity to know what others are saying about him. He's always dealt well with the pressure before. Then again, he never had so much to lose before.

She sits down next to him without saying anything, and he puts his hand on the small of her back. His touch is a kind of relief she's never known, and she makes sure to return it, so he knows that he'll never have to deal with the pressure alone again.

"The board questioned our professionalism." He says without warning. "They said that you were an integral part of Stark Industries and that they 'wish to express a concern' that our relationship would be bad for business. Basically they wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to bang you and then leave before sunrise like I did to everyone else, so that their precious stocks wouldn't dip when you left me high and dry."

"Oh, Tony…" And here she'd been worrying that she'd lost their respect. She realizes now that they just lost hers.

He trails his hands over the spread of magazines in front of him. They rumor his trysts with every celebrity from Oprah to Catherine Coulter from the time he was sixteen to even now, and the ones following his captivity in Afghanistan whisper that he may have become gay, because he hadn't taken a single woman home since. They have bright colors and full-page photos, but they're the ugliest things either of them has ever seen.

"Pepper, did you love me before I was taken?" He asks.

"Of course I did."

"What the hell did you see in me?"

She hates them - the board and the gossip rags - for unearthing everything she's been working so hard to get him past. "Your ingenuity. Your capacity for good. Your - do I really have to run through some laundry list, Tony? Is that what it's going to take for you to see that it doesn't matter what they think?" With one clean motion she swipes all of them off of the bed and onto the floor.

"That's not what upsets me. I don't give a shit about what they think of us - you know me, I don't give a shit about anyone's opinion except for yours and mine and Rhodey's and Jarvis's. What upsets me is that we had this great thing going and now it's got to be exposed to all of this." He makes a vague gesture in the direction of all of the poison surrounding them.

"What do you mean we _had _a great thing going? We still do." She stands up and leads him off the bed, making sure to step on the colorful lies with her four inch heels. "Come on. I think you need some spaghetti."

"And then a pizza? With the works?"

"And then a pizza with the works."

They go to the kitchen, the couple that's just captured the world's attention, but that's not what they're thinking about while they're there. She goes to the stove and starts boiling water and searching for a can of sauce, and he finds the ground turkey and starts shaping them into meatballs. They work together in a silent dance whose steps they know well, until suddenly Tony pulls her away from the sauce and into his arms.

"I love you," He says. "So very much."

"I love you too." She turns around to turn off the flame and then returns to his embrace and demands: "Don't let go."

He doesn't.

* * *

**A/N**- Well, I know it's not the best installment so far, but I felt it was a necessary one for the plot, and it didn't come out half bad. I really excited for the next chapter, which I'll get up as soon as humanly possible. Until then, drop me a line to let me know how it was!


	4. The Second Glass

**Summary** - It's the anniversary of the death of Tony's parents, and Pepper finds herself at a loss to help Tony though it.

**A/N- **This note is for any of you readers out there who are familiar with the Iron Man comics - my research online told me that Tony's parents died in March, but I was unwilling to let that much time lapse between chapter three and this chapter, so I moved it back to September. I apologize for the AU, but I think it makes the most sense out of my options (you'll see by the end).

Also, I can't remember Tony's exact age at the accident… I'm saying he was seventeen.

I'd say this chapter is rated a hard PG-13 for suggestive material towards the end. Nothing explicit - but you've been warned all the same.

Enjoy!

* * *

_The Second Glass_

"Pepper, I want to buy a bowling alley. Make it happen."

She really, _really_ wants to beat him over the head with one of his dummies right now.

"No dice, Stark."

"Please?"

"If I'm busy figuring out how to buy you a bowling alley, who's going to be running _your _company?"

"It doesn't run itself?"

"That is _so _not funny right now, Tony. Stop fantasizing about bowling alleys and come over here to sign these shipping orders."

While she loves Tony's newfound lease on life and his determination to redo past wrongs, as he does with anything he takes it a step too far. He now demands to personally oversee every one of Stark Industries' shipping orders (and what Tony demands, he swiftly receives, or else he finds a way of getting it himself, including measures as extreme as building high-tech superhero suits), and while this allows him an unprecedented degree of control over his company, it has also created a lovely new circle of hell for Pepper, who now has to chase him around reminding him to sign said orders so that the company doesn't grind to a standstill.

He's been avoiding the stack of papers that reaches almost to her ears when she's sitting down for about half an hour now. The good news is, he avoided her by working on the latest designs for arc reactors in power plants. For the first fifteen minutes, that is. Since then he's been trying to wheedle her into buying something huge. He started with a new house (_another_ one: as if the mansions in Malibu and New York and the villas in Cabo San Lucas and Tuscany weren't enough) and since then she's been talking him down to a new jet, a prize winning racehorse (a little known fact: he's scared as shit of horses. Something about their noses) and now a bowling alley. His excuse is it's boring having so much money if he doesn't do something crazy with it once in a while.

Her excuse is that if he doesn't sign these goddamn shipping orders, he'll rapidly stop having as much money as he's been used to all his life.

Now he's standing next to her, eying the stack of papers the way she's sure he used to eye his spinach, and she braces herself for the next ridiculous request.

"Let's go out for a drive, just you and me and the hot rod. We can stop on some cliff and watch the sunset over the ocean. What do you say?"

"That's what you promised me this morning, Mr. Stark, but in case you haven't noticed, the sun set half an hour ago."

Between her testy tone, her use of his proper name, and her girlfriend privilege of guilt-tripping him without mercy, she gets him to sit down and start signing. When she was a little girl, she'd gone through a phase where she was convinced she was going to grow up to be a cowgirl. In a way, she got her wish: she spends all day roping Tony Stark in, trying to drive him off the range and into the pen. It's an exhausting job, but not a thankless one; she wouldn't have him any other way but contentious and restless. There will be other sunsets, she reminds herself, and rests her hand on his left wrist, so that she knows it's only really Pepper the Assistant and not Pepper the Girlfriend that's mad at him.

"What's the date?" He asks with a dramatic sigh.

Dates and his Social Security number. He'll never learn, and she kind of likes it that way.

"September 1st."

The muscles beneath her hand go taut for an instant and his big nimble hand clenches the fountain pen. His reaction evokes a similar one in her; she tenses as she races to figure out why this date means something to him. The anniversary of his capture is months away; the advent of Obadiah's betrayal is longer still. Then a cold finger of realization touches her spine and she knows it's not this date. It's the date that's two weeks away. September 15th. The day his parents died.

He shakes it off of course - he's a master of shaking things off - and signs the rest of the shipping orders in silence, rejecting only one or two that he distrusts. Pepper promises to do a thorough background check on those two, putting them in a folder by her laptop. It's 8:30 now, and although at this time of night she's usually ready to curl up in front of MSNBC or National Geographic, she knows that this is the time when Tony starts to go. Because this is the time of night when the ghosts come out.

"Do you want to take that drive?" She asks.

"Of course." He kisses her, hard, like she can erase his memory, and then goes down to the garage.

* * *

Highway 1 is the type of road that begs the driver to slow down and drink in California's beauty and speed up and enjoy the curves all at once, and Tony and Pepper manage to satisfy both urges at once by speeding all the way to the turnout a few miles away from the mansion. It actually has a sign on it that says "Photo Opportunity", and it annoys Pepper, because you'd have to be stupid not to know that this is the kind of place you'll want to capture forever.

Behind them rise red and grey cliffs covered in stubborn shrubs and battered trees, and before them is the endless expanse of the starlit Pacific. It's not far from what they both consider home (even though Pepper hasn't officially moved in yet out of principle) but it feels worlds away. It reminds her of the lake in the mountains where he promised her she'd never be his Dulcinea. She's starting to feel like he's not keeping that promise. He hasn't said a word since she told him the date - such an innocent number! - but she can feel his thoughts racing the way she shivers every time a car speeds behind him.

They've gotten out of their car and now they're lying side by side on the hood. At first they're joined only by their hands, but as it gets colder Pepper curls up against his side and rests her head on his chest, the way she sleeps most nights, now; even on the rare occasions when she sleeps at her condo, she tries to smush her pillows into a Tony formation. Listening to his heartbeat and the faint hum of the reactor is her way of unwinding after a long day; it used to be a huge bar of Hershey's, but Tony is much warmer and calorie free. She knows her way of coping has changed since they've been together. She doesn't know about him.

Around this time of year, every year, Tony starts to shut down. Everyone anticipates it and no one comments on it. Of course he's always tight-lipped about his feelings - for one thing he's a man and for another thing dealing with what he feels distracts too much from tinkering and running a company - but usually he protects himself through his sarcasm and impulsive behavior. In September, however, he draws into himself, stops making jokes, and doesn't go out anymore.

It's a process that Pepper has always respected in the past years. As his assistant, it wasn't her place to pry into the inner workings of his mind if everything she required of him was done. Her duties ended at the office door. And even when their relationship went beyond boss and employee (not that it really stayed there long) and they were something much more closely resembling friends, she knew there was nothing she could do. Even Rhodey and Jarvis backed off at this time of year. This was Tony's deepest and most private pain.

But she's his girlfriend now. It said pretty directly in the job description that this was the type of situation where her abilities would be needed most - but what were those abilities? She knew better than to badger him into working until he forgot, because remembering was what made him who he was. Could she just hold him, just like this, for fourteen days? Would that make it better? This year, she had to make it better.

"Hey - " She starts to say, because she wanted to convey all of those feelings to him - the beauty of the starlight on the waves, the rush of the cars behind her, the sound of his heartbeat, her resolution to be there for him in every way possible over the next two weeks. But such things that are ever expressible in words.

He raises his head to look at her when she starts to speak, and when she says nothing he just kisses her forehead and then looks away once more.

* * *

On September 2nd he's his usual self. He makes them grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, damning her diet to hell. He tinkers with his cars and nearly sets the house on fire while trying to modify his flight stabilizers. He scandalizes the board. He ignores shipping orders. He turns off the TV in the middle of her favorite show and kisses her until she can't breathe.

By Friday, September 8th, there's a definite change. He spends longer hours in his office and doesn't call her in to show her the newest video he's found online. He works through all his shipping orders and even follows up on the questionable ones himself. When she comes in towards evening to ask him if he wants to meet with Agent Coulson on Monday or Tuesday, the cheeseburger she brought him for lunch is untouched on his desk and he's facing the windows instead of his desk, but she knows he's not admiring the view.

"Go ahead and go home, Pepper." He says. "I'm sure I'll see you tomorrow."

She wants to hold his face in her hands and ask what's wrong, but he gives the command the way an employer speaks to his employee, and the tone has her caged where she stands. Now she wants to take him by the neck and shake his sorrow out of him. She can't do that here, though; it'd hardly be professional. So she acts like his employee and tells him to have a good night and packs up her things and goes to her car. He's surprised, to be sure, when he goes back to the mansion almost an hour later and finds her waiting with an unopened bottle of his nicest merlot.

"I thought I told you to go home." He says as he kicks off his shoes.

"I did." She says, and pours him a glass.

It takes a while, but when the bottle is halfway empty his head is in her lap, and her fingers are in his hair. She'd ask him what was wrong, but she knows it'd be the most idiotic question of the century. She'd ask him what he needs, but she feels that she should know it instinctively. She hates not knowing.

It's a while after that, even, when he stands up and moves in the direction of the garage.

"If I were you I'd go back to your condo and get some rest. I'm not getting to bed anytime soon."

"There's a cot in the garage, isn't there?"

"Yea, _my_ cot."

"Well, you're just going to have to learn how to share, aren't you?"

"Virginia Potts, has anyone ever told you how annoying you can be?"

"No one but you."

"Is it too much to ask that you leave me alone for a little while?"

"Yes." She looks him right in the eye, calling his bluff for the first time in years. Tony Stark is stubborn as hell, but she just might be the only one more stubborn than him. He looks like he wants to fight, but there's already defeat in his eyes, but she knows that it's not her that's defeated him.

She follows him down to the garage and her eyes immediately go to the cot; she never realizes how tired she is until she sees a bed, and then her whole body longs for it. Then it sets eyes on him, and all of her longs to be wrapped around him, to kiss the pulse of his throat, to melt into him and make him forget. They haven't talked about sex since their first date, although they share a bed almost every night and the kisses they share there speak of a passion waiting to be set free. Since he was the hesitant one, she's been waiting on him to make the move, and so far he's been the paragon of control (and the one time she didn't want him to be, too).

That moment won't be coming any time soon, not with him like this. He can barely focus on his new car, let alone allow himself anything approaching intimacy. It breaks her heart to watch him struggling at something that is normally as easy as breathing. She wonders if it's because she's here, and she starts to feel bad for being so stubborn, but it's so hard to know what he needs when he won't even talk to her, and she's about to get up and leave when he turns to her and asks if she can help him.

"Of course," She blurts, too quickly. Smooth, Potts. "Anything you need."

In the end he just wants her to hold some wires while he fiddles with others. He doesn't play at being electrocuted this time, as he has before. He just works with a silent fury, occasionally giving her terse instructions. After a while he withdraws his hands and she does too, and they both just stand there under the hood of the car, like it's a roof on the world that keeps out all the pain. He makes an incoherent sound, one so low and guttural with unsaid good-byes that it sounds like the shifting of a tectonic plate, and he leans his forehead against her shoulder. For once she doesn't care about the grease stains on her shirt. She embraces him instead, and lets the rest of the grease cover her, so that he'll see that she's here, that she's not a ghost like everyone else he loves.

"Let's go to bed." He says.

They do, but it's clear that he's doing this for her, that he's still not ready to sleep. It makes her angry. She's supposed to be doing things for him, not the other way around. In vain she tries to stay awake, rubbing his back in the slow circles she knows he loves so that he'll start to let go, but the muscles remain tight and in the end it's Pepper that goes quietly into the good night.

* * *

On the 9th of September, 6 days until that day she too has come to dread, he tells her they're going to a premiere in Hollywood. He'd been invited months before and never sent an RSVP, preferring to keep his options open until that last possible moment, and after their good morning kiss he tells her that he's taking her there, that they're going to go to Rodeo Drive and buy her a new dress for the occasion. She doesn't refuse - not because she needs another dress, but because the look in his eyes kills her, and if going out on the town is what he needs she'll do it, because she loves him, and she'd do anything to have him back the way he was on August 31st.

They eat a late breakfast and then Happy drives them to Hollywood, and Tony takes her into every shop on that famous drive. She models dozens of dresses for him, and if it had been just up to her she would've been happy with any of them, but there's always a tightness in his forehead when she does her little twirl, so she always asks the star-struck salesgirl to take it back.

Finally, when she's starting to wonder if they'll ever make it to the premiere at all, something in his eyes warms. The dress she's put on is powder blue with a boat neck collar and a hem that floats around her knees.

"You're beautiful." He says with his first genuine smile all day, standing up from his chair and tracing the curve of his neck with his fingertips. "Pearls. That's what you need. And sapphire earrings."

So he goes to Tiffany's and they get her just that - a strand of pearls and a pair of sapphire earrings - and before she can protest against the spending of any more money, he's telling Happy to take them to a salon so Pepper can have her hair done. She watches him as they navigate the maddening Hollywood traffic and although he's sitting right next to her his gaze is thousands of miles away once more.

"Would you like to go buy a bowling alley while I'm getting my hair done?" She asks affectionately.

"I'm over bowling alleys. I was thinking a vineyard in Napa, instead, where you and I could go to get away. We could roll up our pants and stand in those big barrels of grapes and pretend we're smashing the faces of the board."

It's not what he's thinking at all - he's thinking about his parents, it's in his eyes, all over his posture, but god damn him he won't say it.

"That sounds lovely," is all she can say in reply.

They spend that evening at the premiere, stealing the spotlight from the actual stars of the movie. It's their first big public appearance, and they expertly field the questions from the reporters. Tony wears his most winning smile - his most fake smile. The movie itself is better than she expected, but it's over late, and the after party promises to be later. She doesn't like the thought of Tony around an open bar in this kind of a state, and after he talks to the director (who'd invited him) for a while she asks if he's ready to go home.

"I am if you are."

"Stop thinking about what I want and ask yourself what you want."

"I want you to be happy." He has that wounded look on his face like she's just kicked his puppy. She sighs deeply.

"Come on. Let's go home."

The car ride is silent and he's getting ready to go a million miles away again when she tells Happy to raise the divider and takes his hand and pulls him over so that he's sitting right next to her and holds his chin so he can't look away.

"Talk to me, Tony. What is wrong?"

He flinches away from her. "You know what's wrong. Does it really have to be said?"

"It does if you want me to help you make it better."

"This isn't the kind of thing that you just make better with Neosporin and a fun Band-Aid." His voice is a low growl and, for the first time, Pepper thinks she's overstepped her boundaries. She takes a deep breath and lowers her voice.

"I'm not trying to trivialize what you're going through. I'm just trying to help you go through it. It's driving me crazy watching you hurt like this without saying anything. My God, Tony, usually it's getting you to shut up that's the problem!"

The levity works, and a smile cracks through his frown for an instant before it's swallowed again. "It never seemed to bother you before that I shut down at this time of year."

"Well, that was my mistake. It did bother me - I just shut down too so you wouldn't see, because before this year we weren't supposed to be anything more than a billionaire genius and his harried assistant."

He puts his arm around her and sighs, staring up at the roof of the car. "Pepper, I've been shutting down around this time of year for twenty years now. I can't promise you that I'll just be able to reverse the process and pour my heart out to you. That's not to say that I don't want to - but - it isn't that easy."

"I didn't expect it to be." Her voice is so soft she almost doesn't hear it herself, but his arm squeezes tighter around her shoulder, so she knows that he did. "I love you, Tony." They don't say it often - it's still too raw and new - and when she puts her hand on his chest she can feel his heart speeding up.

"Stay with me, on the 15th." He tells her. "I don't ever want to spend that day alone again."

"Did you really think I'd be anywhere else?" She curls up fully on the seat, so that her knees are on his lap and he can hold her even closer. Sure, it's dangerous as hell to be driving on a California freeway past midnight without seatbelts on, but she knows that sometimes the greatest comfort of all is being able to comfort someone else, because it reminds you that you aren't powerless, that you aren't alone. He takes her invitation, resting his cheek on the top of her head, and after a moment of silence he murmurs:

"I love you too, you know."

"Yea," She murmurs back. "I know."

* * *

September 15th is appropriately grey and cold, the kind of weather that should never happen on a Friday. Except for this Friday.

Nothing is scheduled for the day, but everyone expects that. Like the infamous 'no comment' line, it's established company policy that Tony doesn't come to work on this day. No one else takes the day off; instead they work with renewed effort. It's their way of acknowledging his loss - and the loss of the world, really - without using words.

When Pepper wakes up, he's already awake. He lies still beside her, rubbing her back with slow soothing circles. Neither of them says good morning, because it's not a good morning. Even Jarvis is utterly silent. They just lie there, listening to the waves outside, and there are moments when Pepper feels like an intruder on his deepest of sorrows, but when she shifts around as if to stand he clutches her close.

They're in bed for so long that time suspends and there isn't even enough sunlight in the room to restart Pepper's internal clock. Her body starts wanting to sleep again but she doesn't want to miss some crucial moment of this day. Tony certainly doesn't seem close to sleeping. He lies there on his back and barely moves except to breathe. She's never seem him so still before; even when she wakes up early just to watch him sleep, he's restless. His nose twitches, he coughs, he rolls over, he mumbles under his breath. Occasionally he has nightmares. Today it's almost as if he's dead.

She doesn't dare ask him what he's thinking. She's here on his terms, and if he isn't going to talk, she isn't going to ask. She trusts him to know what he needs, and to know that she's here to give it to him. The long hours of silence give her a lot of time to think, too, especially about her own parents. Most people would be surprised to know that Pepper Potts doesn't have parents either. Her mother died of a seizure in her sleep when Pepper was only 5, and her father fell apart after that. It fell to her to pick up the pieces and grow up; she learned to dress herself and pack her own lunch long before the other kids, and by the time she started high school she was running the house. She was a freshman in college when her father died of a heart attack.

Of course that caused her pain; of course it hurt that she didn't have any memories of her mother, that her father had always been half the man he should've been. But because all of that happened when she was so young, because she had always had to take care of herself, it stopped hurting so much long ago. Tony's yearly grief almost makes her feel guilty, but then she reminds herself that his parents were snatched from him by an accident, not by a disease whose probability he had known, as she had known her father's chance of survival, because she was the one that forced him to go to his appointments and take his medication. She knew that once she left the house, he would fall apart for good. Tony's parents had mythic proportions in his mind, and the pictures of them showed a couple still in their prime, still so full of life. She envies him having known them that way, the way she had never known her parents. She doesn't envy him his pain at losing them.

It had been true, what they said; that they were all each other had left in the world. She feels that now more than ever, when it's just the two of them lying in that bed with their thoughts. Finally, after God knows how long, he gets up and speaks. "Let's get dressed. We're going to the cemetery."

While he goes into the bathroom to get ready, Pepper turns on her BlackBerry just to get the time what she sees makes her heart sink in her chest. It's 3 in the afternoon.

"Sweetheart?" She calls softly, going towards the bathroom. "Do you always stay in bed this late?" She doesn't specify today, because she isn't entirely sure how she could say it. On the day your childhood ended? On the day your world changed forever?

"Yes."

"My God, Tony…"

He takes her hand and presses it to his lips. "Believe me, today's the best it's been in a long time."

He returns to dressing with a methodical air that speaks of too many years of coping with this kind of pain. Pepper can't speak around the lump in her throat, so she goes to dress too. She's brought black slacks and a black blouse with her, anticipating such a trip, because the death of her mother forced her to anticipate things, to anticipate that her father would forget to sign the field trip form again and that she'd have to forge his signature herself, that she'd have to pack her own lunch too and walk home from school when he didn't pick her up. She also has a black hat with a tulle veil that she draws over her face when she's done. When she was younger she'd always wanted to wear such a hat because it made her feel like she was one of the glamorous women in the old movies, but now she wears it because it'll hide her red eyes if she starts to cry.

Once Tony is dressed in his black dress shirt and suit, they get into the Audi and leave. They stop at a nearby florist's shop first, where enough flowers are waiting for them to fill the trunk and the backseat alike. Pepper was always the one to place this order, and since she always knew what day it was she always knew what they were for, but she finds herself curious now as to what a man could do with so many flowers: lilies, roses, chrysanthemums…

Happy drives them to a cemetery about an hour away from the mansion and Tony is holding her hand the entire time. She waits for him to get out, but he doesn't waste time sitting there; he gets up and opens both of their doors, and then starts unloading the flowers. Happy doesn't get out to help; apparently it's established, by now, that he usually does this alone. But Pepper decided on September 1st that this year was going to be different, so this year he doesn't trudge through the gothic statues and monumental mausoleums alone. She trudges right alongside him, burdened under the weight of sorrow so fresh it feels as though they died yesterday, as though this is the first funeral he's created for them and not the twentieth.

The cemetery has that grey aura around it that only old cemeteries have, because they date to a time before coffins were sealed in concrete and here the dead still have the possibility of walking amongst the living. The tombs of Howard and Maria Stark are almost dead center, on top of a grassy knoll, separated from the clutter of the other graves. On top of both stand weeping angels, one male and one female, with swords slack in their marble hands, as if these are the guardian angels who failed to protect them that rainy night on the road. Howard Stark had certainly made as many enemies in his time as his son has now, and yet it was a car accident that stole him away. To think that we are all so fragile, no matter how brilliant we are, no matter how rich, no matter how admired, makes Pepper shiver.

They dispel the grey aura of the cemetery with the brilliance of the flowers, which cover the ground surrounding the gravestones after a few trips back and forth. Then Tony and Pepper just stand before the two weeping angels, neither delivering judgment upon them for their oversight nor asking their forgiveness, but simply remembering the two people whose souls they guard over now, even in death. Pepper wonders if there's something Tony wants to say, if she should leave him, but when she starts to form the words he just clenches his hand around hers.

"Don't go. I don't know how I ever did this without you." His voice is so thick with tears that it barely sounds like him. He's taking those deep breaths that are meant to hold back sobs and yet only ever bring them on faster. "They had so much more left to give to this world. To me."

"Tony, they gave the world _you_, and they live on in that gift, in the man you're becoming, the choices you're making." Dammit, even she's crying now. "I-I never met them. I wish I had. I wish I could meet them right now and thank them myself for raising the man I love. I know I don't say it often, but - I'm so proud of you. I'd love to be able to share that pride with them. I never will…"

And then they're both crying, and they're thankful that the cemetery is empty because it's the kind of crying that isn't pretty, the kind of crying that hurts all the way down to the marrow of their bones, the kind of crying that unburdens the soul. Pepper isn't accustomed to letting go of her emotions - they get in the way of good business sense - but she does this time, because she knows that this is what Tony needed all along, someone to tell him that his parents hadn't died in vain, that he wasn't alone without them, someone to mourn their loss alongside him. And Pepper does all these things - she mourns the loss of two people she never knew, she mourns her own parents, and she mourns the pain that Tony has suffered under for two decades.

It's over, finally, and they stand there before the graves for another minute or so before Tony squeezes Pepper's hand one more time and they go back to the car. On the way home, Pepper thinks to ask what time it is. Happy informs her that it is six o'clock. It takes a little longer to get back to the mansion because of the evening traffic, and it's after seven thirty when Tony dismisses Happy for the night and walks inside. He goes to the bar and sits down, and while Pepper watches from the doorway, dreading what is to come next, he takes out two glasses and a bottle of brandy and fills both, then puts the brandy away. One glass he keeps for himself, and the other he sets in front of the barstool to his right.

Pepper knows instinctively that the second glass isn't for her, so she sits to his left and wonders what happens now. Tony says nothing. He sits there without taking a sip from his brandy, staring at the clock above him. It hits seven forty-five. Two minutes later, at seven forty-seven precisely, he speaks.

"This is when I got the call from the police. My parents were on their way home from a benefit. I was grounded for joyriding in Dad's nicest car and he wouldn't let me go, so I decided to drink his most expensive brandy as payback. I started getting nervous after a while, so I made sure to pour a glass for him so that he'd have one waiting for him when he got him. It was the kind of brandy he was saving for a special occasion.

"Then, right now, at this time, twenty years ago, I was on the phone with the police. They told me there'd been an accident and that they needed me to come to the hospital. I got there and I asked what room they were in and they took me to the morgue instead and asked me to identify the bodies, even though they were America's poster children and anyone would've known their faces.

"I was there all night answering questions with Obadiah, getting things figured out. I was seventeen years old, Pepper, I didn't know what to do or what to think. I had to drive myself home in the morning, and when I got there that second glass of brandy was still sitting there on the counter, untouched, and that sight more than anything else forced me to realize that they were never coming home."

"Tony, I had - I had no idea - "

Her hand is wrapped tightly around his forearm and he rests his hand on top of it, waiting for a minute or so before he manages to go on.

"Every year since then, I've left this glass out until morning. I keep hoping that one day he's going to come home and drink it. Usually I just drink the rest of the bottle myself, but - this year, Pepper, I'd like very much not to drink alone."

Pepper nods once in understanding and then gets up and moves to his right. She picks up the second glass and raises it as he raises his; they touch them together without making a toast, because it'd be unnecessary. Then they drink together, and the brandy tastes smoky and warm and expensive on Pepper's tongue, and it's the taste of unhealed heartache, and as she drinks it down to the dregs Pepper knows what she must do, what she can give to Tony to ease the pain.

She leans in and kisses him, not hard but firmly, with passion and intent. After a moment he puts down his glass and wraps his arms around her, crushing her to him with a soft moan, a moan that speaks of relief and fragility and tells her that finally, after so many years alone, someone has finally come home for him.

The kisses grow stronger, deeper, and they both taste like brandy and tears, and there's a hole in both of them that there's only one way to fill. Pepper leans forward on her barstool and feels her balance start to shift and she searches for leverage on the countertop, and her fumbling hands knock over both glasses and they shatter on the tile beneath their feet. It's that sound, the sound of past pain shattering irreparably, that makes Tony pull back.

"Not like this," He manages to say. "Not just because we've had a long day and a tall glass of brandy."

"That's not how this is happening." She replies. "It's happening because there's too goddamn much sorrow in this world and I love you too much to let it hurt you one more night."

He sits there for a moment and then he rises, grinding the glass further under his feet, and lifts her from the stool and carries her in his arms to the bedroom.

When they finally make love, it's side by side, facing each other, so she can hold him and see the look in his eyes when, after so many long years, she finally brings him home, not to a full glass of brandy but to the sound of her whispered words of love. The time they spend in each other's arms is uncertain and fragile and over too quickly, but it's _right_, and afterwards he smiles at her the way she's always wanted him too, a soft tender smile entirely devoid of sarcasm or sorrow.

On September 16th, Pepper Potts awakens before Tony Stark. She's the one to feel the first onset of panic after the night they've shared. There's no going back from where they've been now. But when he wakes up and stretches, she can see the knowledge that there's no second glass waiting for him anymore fill his eyes.

"You ready for round two?" He grins, rolling on top of her and kissing her long and slow.

Of course she hasn't made the pain leave forever. She'd be naïve to think such a thing was possible. But she knows that as long as she's around, he'll never suffer under it alone again. And soon she's smiling too.

* * *

**A/N- **Whew, I have been wanting to get that finished for days now, but I didn't want to rush it so I made sure to take my time. I think this is one of my favorites so far… I hope you enjoyed it too! Let me know if you did!


	5. The Demon in the Bottle

**Disclaimer-** I own him! At last! …oh, wait, that was a dream. Damn. Never mind, I own nothing, as usual. Not the Marvel Universe, not the movie _Top Gun_, and not the poem "Dover Beach". But I have managed to put all of them in one story. Take that, real owners!

**Summary** - Many things have changed for Tony Stark in the year since he was kidnapped, but some old demons refuse to die…

**A/N** - I apologize both for my lateness in this update and to those of you reviewers who requested fluff in this chapter… my muse is a harsh, unforgiving creature. She simply can't let anyone be happy for longer than one chapter. Besides, I feel that the issues addressed here are darker facets of Tony's personality that are often overlooked and deserve some more attention. It should be noted that alcoholism is the subject of this chapter, and those with sensitivities to such subject matter have been warned.

I shamelessly stole this chapter's title from a compilation of classic Iron Man comics. Well, actually it was "Demon in a Bottle". Same difference. Enjoy!

* * *

_The Demon in the Bottle_

The movie, of course, is _Top Gun_, because what else do you put on when an Air Force colonel and the world's most famous maverick get together for a guy's night in? And, naturally, they've spent the first forty-five minutes criticizing the movie's every inaccuracy. It's a good thing that it's guys only, because if a certain woman had been there, she would've already thrown something at both of them and begun a lecture about the necessary suspense of belief.

"Man, I'm just glad you two finally got that over with. I was afraid to light a match in the same room and ignite a back draft."

"You know, Rhodey, that's another good movie. We should put that on next. Jarvis, could you make a run to Blockbuster and get Back Draft for us?"

"I'll just get my purse, shall I?" The A.I. rumbles. "And may I remind you, sir, that I am under strict orders to simply enjoy this evening with the two of you?"

"Who says you can't enjoy Blockbuster? Pick up _I, Robot_ for yourself or something. Just don't get any ideas."

Rhodey snorts into his beer bottle and shakes his head at his longtime friend. "Like I said, thank God you and Pepper are finally going steady. I always knew you'd lost it when you started talking to your house. No offense, Jarvis."

"The ability to take offense was not part of my programming, Colonel."

"Right. How else could you live with this loon?"

"Hey, Pepper seems to do it just fine. Wait a minute, did you actually say 'going steady'?"

"Yea, I did. You got a problem with the term, Stark?"

"You know, I don't think anything so cheesy has ever made me feel so good." He grins, and from that grin Rhodey can tell that he's in full form. Part of his genius is certainly his infectious charm. "You know, Afghanistan was actually sort of a good thing, all things considered. Especially the fact that it brought us together."

"Yea. I've gotta admit, I'm proud of the way you've turned everything around. No homo or anything, man."

"Thanks, James."

The moment that follows is awkward for its intimacy, and instantly both men search for something manly to do. For Rhodey, it's commenting on how much he loves the line about enemy jets giving the pilot a hard-on, and for Tony it's swigging down the rest of his beer and tossing it onto the floor (again, it's a good thing that it's guys only). Rhodey, who's still nursing his second bottle, notices that that was Tony's third and that his friend's eyes are wandering towards his bar.

"Do you think you've had enough?"

"Yea, enough of beer. I'm ready for something stronger."

And as suddenly as vertigo attacks Cougar at the beginning of the movie, Rhodey's stomach drops. He knows this pattern. He's prayed that Afghanistan bled the alcohol out of Tony's veins forever. But Tony is in full form tonight - he's charming and happy and in love, and to him it seems only natural to amp up the happiness. Tony drinks for many reasons: to dull the pain, to slow down his mind, to get a party started. Rhodey doesn't particularly like any of them.

Tony has made it to the bar and back with a glass of scotch when he notices the colonel's silence. Suddenly the charm is gone and his mouth is tight around the edges.

"Spit it out already, James. I can practically hear you getting up on your high horse."

James Rhodes chooses his next words carefully, because Tony has two extremes, and while one leads to them reenacting the karaoke scene in the bar together, the other tends to lead to black eyes. He values that Tony trusts him enough to show him both, but the evening has been so good and he doesn't want to ruin it. He catches himself wishing he didn't care so much - because if you don't care so much it's easy to get by without causing too much fuss - but he knows that what Tony really needs are people who care so much that they brave his anger to show it.

"All I'm saying is that just because things are good now doesn't mean they should be taken for granted."

Tony, in one of his leaps of intuition, grasps Rhodey's meaning more easily than Rhodey grasped it himself and glances at the glass in his hand and rolls his eyes. "James, if this is about alcohol again, you can save it. I'm not an alcoholic. Alcoholics have a drinking problem and I don't happen to have a problem with drinking."

"Quit the act. You know what I mean."

"Rhodey, I enjoy having a drink. It tastes good and it makes me feel good. I don't see you lecturing Pepper for liking Ben and Jerry's."

And just like that, Rhodey's temper is flaring too. For the smartest man in the world, he's a terrible smartass, and he likes to play dumb at the exact moment when he should really be putting his brain to work.

"Tony, why the hell are you playing stupid with me? You know as well as everyone else how dangerous this little habit of yours is, if not better, considering that your father was - "

"My father was not an alcoholic anymore than I am."

Silence settles over the empty bottles on the floor and, perversely, "Take My Breath Away" is playing in the background. Tony's hand is clenched on his glass. Rhodey's hand is clenched on his knee. These are the little things that the two men notice in that moment before Jarvis breaks in.

"Sir, you gave me a standing order to inform you of any unusual activity around the areas of your shipments, and I'd like to take this moment to inform you that there's been an incident in Kosovo."

Tony sighs and his hand unclenches, and Rhodey relaxes a bit more too, although another part of him is already tense at the thought of more violence. "I thought you were under orders to just enjoy yourself tonight, Jarvis."

"So were you, sir." The A.I. informs his creator quietly.

Tony smiles a tight smile and drinks the rest of his scotch in one gulp. "Sorry to break up the party, but I've gotta go. I don't want to continue this conversation when I get back. See you around, Rhodey."

He doesn't even really say good-bye when Tony walks out of the living room and heads for the garage. Rhodey remains sitting on the couch, and from there he can hear Iron Man rocketing off into the night sky, and he should feel safe now that the Golden Knight is on his way to right all the wrongs, but he still can't shake the feeling that Tony has come too far too fast, as he always does, and that his new lease on life is more fragile than he might think.

He stays and watches the movie until Goose dies, and then he doesn't have the heart to watch the rest, anymore than he has the heart to watch Tony Stark spin out of control all over again.

* * *

There are two kinds of post-mission Tony. There is the exhilarated, top of the world Tony who knows he's just done the right thing, who knows he's made a difference in the world. This is the Tony who picks up the waiting Pepper and swings her around a few times and kisses her until they both remember the breathe, who immediately wants to go into a detailed description of everything that happened and revel in his own brilliance, as he has every right to do.

Then there's the other Tony. The one who lands slowly, carefully, who is motionless and silent when the machines disassemble the armor, who doesn't bitch about his wounds or beg Pepper to play nurse to them. The one whose eyes are hollow and sad, because they've watched another innocent man die, because the world isn't black and white or even grey; it's crimson with the blood of such innocents. This is the Tony who holds her tight and kisses her forehead and walks away brushing his hand across her abdomen to crunch numbers and run scenarios with Jarvis, to make sure that he never makes the same mistakes twice. And he never does. She keeps hoping that he'll run out of mistakes, and the other Tony will disappear forever, because which post-mission Pepper shows up is entirely dependent on which post-mission Tony flies into the room, and when he's happy she's exasperated but relieved, and when he's silent she feels like her whole world has gone silent too.

Right now Pepper is waiting at the mansion, because Rhodey called her before he left and told her that Tony had ended guy's night early to go on a mission to Kosovo. It is their unspoken agreement that they will inform each other of all of Tony's missions, so that they can gird themselves against the fear that they'll lose him again. They do not wait together; to do so would be to announce their lack of faith in him, to broadcast their mortal fear of a world without their grinning genius.

And, of course, because whichever Tony comes home, he and Pepper always need each other with a need neither has felt before; they need to reassure themselves that they are both alive, because it's not just his life that's on the line when he flies out of that garage and into the great wide dangerous world beyond it. There are some nights, the nights when the silent Tony comes home, that she considers stopping her birth control and not telling him, because on those nights she's so terribly afraid that he'll never come home again, and she wants to have some piece of him to be hers always, like a raven snatching shiny scraps for its nest. But somehow that moment when the question is on her lips is also the moment when he rolls over and rests his hand over her heart and tells her how much he loves her: more than the sun, more than the stars, more than life. It's the moment when she realizes that she already has so many pieces of him that will always be hers, that it's just desperation talking.

Oh, yes, Pepper knows something about desperation. She knows it when she sees it. And she sees it when Tony comes home.

It's a new Tony this time. He jerks out of his armor as quickly as he can, almost tripping in an effort to get away when the machines reach his boots. The flight suit is gone next, and in the moment before he pulls on his sweat pants she sees the blood and bruises that cover nearly one side of his body, and her heart stops. It stops again when she sees the look in his eyes. He is enraged.

"What happened?" She asks softly, braced against one of his worktables, waiting for the blow to fall.

"There was a company in Kosovo that Stane had done business with. Their contract was cut off prematurely during the summer. They asked for a new contract with our defensive lines and I gave it to them and those goddamn bastards took my defensive tech and took it apart and used it to assemble the weapons they would've had anyway if I had never bothered to try and make a difference. I can't win!"

He slams his hand down so hard on the table that she's surprised she doesn't hear bones breaking. She flinches and wants to say something, anything, that will make it better, but lying to him would only insult his intelligence, and telling the truth would do anything but make it feel better.

"I'm sure you can find away," She finally manages to say. "You design the tech without the parts they need. We can research buyers more carefully - we can refuse to do business with certain areas of the world - "

"They'll find a way, Pepper," His voice is so soft now, so fragile, she wants to take it in her hands and hold it to her heartbeat. "They'll always find a way."

She walks over to him and wraps her arms around him. "Then you just keep giving them hell for it."

He returns the embrace gradually, but before he's holding her too close he pushes her back gently and holds her at arm's length so he can touch her cheek. "You're all the good in the world to me, Pepper," He says. "You always have been."

She doesn't know what she could possibly say that would explain what she feels in that moment, so she just kisses him instead, and he starts to deepen the kiss, and that's when she tastes it.

"Sorry," She sputters, pulling back. "You taste really strongly of alcohol…" The beer bottles on the floor gave away the fact that he and Rhodey had been drinking before he left, but this taste is far more recent.

"I got pretty banged up. They didn't exactly have a Walgreens with aspirin where I was but they did have a liquor store. I drank some brandy to take the edge off the pain. I was perfectly safe."

On another night she might've yelled at him - screamed at him, even - for drinking and then donning the suit, but the need is so naked in his eyes and she knows it's in hers too, and love has taken the edge off of her the way he says alcohol did him, and she's so damn grateful he's alive, and so she ignores the voice in the back of her head in favor of leading him up to the bedroom. He's bruised and sore but neither of them can stand not to touch each other right now. And it's worth it, because when he calls out her name, everything is right again. When he falls asleep and she reassures herself with the even rise and fall of his chest, it feels better still. Then she kisses him, and his taste unsettles her. Tears. Sweat. Brandy. Desperation.

* * *

It is a routine press conference - or it should have been. He used to hold them quarterly - now it's almost monthly. A long life in the camera's unforgiving glassy eye has taught Tony Stark that it's best if the world hears it from you, that the news will get what it wants anyway it can. Journalists should be required to minor in ethics at every major university in his opinion. He's considered buying off enough deans to do so before, but the irony of buying off men to require ethics has always stopped him.

He has to pity them a little, because he knows that most of them aren't hounding him of their own accord. Most of them start out ethical, really, believing themselves to be the righteous Upton Sinclairs of the world. They're just trying to earn their next meal and if their editors tell them to get the latest scoop on Tony Stark, they must obey. He's the story of the year - who wouldn't want a piece of the pie?

So on this crisp, routine November day, Tony finds himself on a podium again, fielding open questions. The faces have become familiar since June and he finds himself calling on them by name.

"Sir, Iron Man's activities have begun to grow wider in range. Why was he most recently spotted in Kosovo and even as far as Russia?" asks one tall brunette, David McBride from a foreign affairs journal. Tony likes him. He makes a mental note to ask Pepper to give him an exclusive interview. He likes to reward the good journalists. But how will they fit that in between the developmental meetings about changing the design of the defensive tech and the massive headache of redesigning all the old weapons factories and that meeting Coulson has been hounding him about…?

"Sir?"

Tony comes back to himself with a start, and something cold and hard begins to form in his stomach. He's never hesitated to answer a question before. David looks puzzled and wary.

"The answer to your question, David, is that Iron Man's duties aren't restricted to one part of the world. They are to protect any innocent people who have been put in harm's way by the actions of the corrupt, in any way he can."

He likes how everyone refers to Iron Man as something separate from himself; it's how he feels. When he puts on that suit he is someone else, someone who acts and doesn't have to answer these questions. But he's not in the suit now, is he? So he calls on another reporter, a middle-aged woman named Brenda Chapman whom he'd always overlooked in another lifetime and who seemed to still resent him for it. He should grant her a one-on-one interview too - but when?

"Mr. Stark, is it true that some of Iron Man's new missions are directed by a new government agency called S.H.I.E.L.D?"

Easy one, thank god. "I am not at liberty to answer that question, Ms. Chapman." He didn't even want to think about Fury right now. The man's name was apt in more ways than one. He didn't like working for him or anyone else - he didn't trust anyone but himself (and Pepper and Rhodey and Jarvis, most of the time) anymore, after the things he'd seen. But he was certainly not in a class of his own in this world, and that was one more thing he just didn't want to think about.

"How about Ms. Rabhan?" When he hears Pepper move closer and start controlling the field he knows he's slipping. There's just so much on his mind this morning, his skull is buzzing and he feels like he hasn't slept in a week although Pepper's presence in his home has certainly made his sleep more regular.

"I just wanted to ask Mr. Stark how he chooses which charities to donate his time and money to."

The question isn't even directed at him, but he answers it anyway, to show the room that he's still in control. He's always been terribly good at that particular sleight of hand.

"I don't have any grand scheme for choosing them - if they make the offer and I like their offer and their background checks out, then I donate. If you have any suggestions, you may make them to Ms. Potts after the conference is over."

"It's just that I noticed that many of the charities you donate to are children's charities. Any special reason?"

She's overstepping the limit, but he doesn't like to leave a question unanswered, so he laughs it off (but it's a nervous laugh, and it doesn't release any of his tension): "Well, I just happen to like kids, Ms. Rabhan."

"Does that mean there's the possibility of heirs to the Stark Empire, then?"

The room goes silent. Too silent. He can't look back at Pepper - can't see what her face looks like. He doesn't know what to say to that. Mere weeks ago he'd been lost in thoughts of their future house and their offspring but everything has been coming up too quickly on him, there's so much in the NOW to deal with that he can't think ahead anymore, the way he used to, and suddenly everything is used to: used to think six steps ahead, used to know the answer to every question, used to be able to sit down and relax once in a while, used to used to -

"That concludes today's press conference. On behalf of Mr. Stark I thank all of you for attending - " The rest of Pepper's closing remarks are drowned out in the din of disappointed reporters, and even his own words of good-bye are lost as he is ushered away from the podium and out of the room, towards the waiting car. Once inside, he sits with his head in his hands and tries to force the world to start making sense again. He's managed to at least dull the buzzing in his skull when he feels a hand rubbing up and down his back.

"Tony?" He glances up at the sound of Pepper's voice. "Sweetheart, what happened in there?" She doesn't use pet names that often. Come to think of it, no one had used pet names for him that often. He used to just be Tony. Now he's her sweetheart. And he has to explain to her what's going on his head.

"Cancel all my appointments for the rest of the day." He says instead. Of course, he can't put them off forever, he can just put them off for a little while, and he knows he's making an even more colossal headache for her than he has now trying to reschedule all of those meetings, and he feels horribly for doing it, but right now he really needs to bury himself somewhere deep and dark and figure out what's wrong with him.

Pepper accepts his directions without question - he must've really scared her with his behavior, to make her that compliant - and he takes advantage of her distraction to open the car's bar and take out the bottle of vodka. He pours himself a glass on the rocks and is onto his second when she finally puts down the BlackBerry.

"Are you going to tell me what's going on, or are you just going to keep drinking?"

"I'm just stressed. Nothing more, nothing less. I need to take some time to relax."

She gently takes the glass from his hand and sets it on the floor, and pulls him towards her so that his back is against her chest and her lips are right against his ear, and her scent surrounds him, and he wants to melt into her but he can't, because he can't shut off his goddamned brain, and he can't help wondering why she's not freaking out about that last question that he hadn't answered, and if maybe the fact that she's not freaking out means that she likes the thought, that he's not alone in his dreams of blue rooms -

"There's more than one way to relax, Tony. Let me take care of you."

She does. They go home and both change into comfortable clothes, and once they're in the bathroom Pepper gives Tony the best massage of his life, until his entire body is jelly and what happens inevitably happens. But afterwards, even afterwards, when she's curled onto his chest, limp and satisfied, her dreamy smile doesn't quite get that itch at the back of his skull. And he feels awful, make no mistake, because he wants her to solve everything for him, wants to curl up with his face pressed into her stomach and tell her that he feels like the world is a mad broken tilt-a-whirl around him and he can't make it stop.

So he gets up and leaves a kiss on her forehead and goes to the bar and pours himself another tall glass of vodka. It's just going to be one more, he promises himself. He's had two by the time Pepper comes looking for him.

"Tony, I've got some bad news," She murmurs as he hides the bottle. She's such a perfect picture, standing on the steps in his shirt with her hair rumpled and her eyes sleepy and yet still trying to sound professional as she reads something on her BlackBerry, that she makes his heart ache. He wants to shout at her to save him but he doesn't know what from.

"Hit me with it, Potts. Don't just stand there looking good enough to eat all day."

"There's one thing I forgot to cancel earlier. That awards ceremony and banquet for your humanitarian award. I know you needed some R&R, but there are only two more hours until the event and you are the guest of honor and I really, really don't think we can - " She's so distressed now, as Pepper the Assistant and Pepper the Girlfriend war inside of her, the one wanting to force him to do what is best for his company, the other wanting to force him to do what is best for him. It makes his heart swell and he crosses the room to her and kisses her and everything is finally okay.

"No sweat, Pepper. With you at my side, any event is going to be a breeze. Do you already have a dress all picked out for yourself, or have we got some time to go shopping? Scratch that, we're going shopping. Either that, or you're going dressed just like that."

She looks for an instant like she wants to argue, and then she licks her lips. A little frown crosses her face, and then she leans in and kisses him once more, tentative and searching, searching for something. Afterwards she licks her lips again and the frown deepens.

"Let Happy drive us."

"I'm fine, Pepper." He soothes, smoothing one hand over her hair and then cupping her face. "You and I both know that. There's just been a lot going on lately. We'll go to the banquet and then take the day off tomorrow and I'll be a new man, I promise."

Pepper sighs and takes his hands down from her face. Her every movement is delicate, like she's surrounded by trip wires. "Tony, there's no shame in admitting that you've bitten off more than you can chew. In the last six months, you've completely changed the direction of a multi-billion dollar company and your own life. You've jumped into this entirely new world that Fury and the Avengers Initiative are proposing. It's enough to overwhelm anyone, and if you really do need to take a break from _everything _and consider what's happening and make sure that you're doing what you really need to, I will support you every step of the way."

Something in her words makes him want to square his shoulders and plant his feet. He does before he responds. "I don't call quits, Pepper. It's what's gotten me this far in life. I know what I'm doing is right, and I've gotta keep running with it."

Again, there's that carefulness in her before she responds. "Pride and ambition can be great virtues, Tony, but they can also be great faults. Just - just consider you and I taking a vacation and getting away from all of this for a while, and really thinking about what's going on."

"I'll consider it." He says, by which he means that it's off the table, and she knows it, and the hurt in her eyes is like a bitter taste on the air. "Now what do you say about going out for that new dress?"

She lets him. He can sense that she doesn't enjoy it, but she lets him. He imagines the rest himself. By the time they get to the banquet, that buzz in the back of his skull is back.

* * *

It isn't bad during the awards ceremony. The speaker and those who approach him afterwards with their gratitude remind him why it was worth it to change his entire life around. The genuine smile on Pepper's face only reinforces it. But then they sit down to the banquet and those same people who were just congratulating him before are starting to ask what he's going to do next, where Stark Industries will be this time next year, whether or not he can help them out with an idea they've had. And then he's forced to confront the fact that he doesn't know the answer to any of those questions. It's all he can do to roll with the punches and pray he doesn't take one in the face. He's starting to feel hot under his expensive suit. He asks the waiter to keep the martinis coming. Pepper has only two, and she gives him a significant glance that might have deterred him in another life, and he has just one more than he should when he finally decides that he can't stand this conversation anymore and pulls Pepper to her feet and demands that the dancing start.

"Tony, I don't think anyone is ready yet-" She starts to hiss, but he cuts her off:

"Come on, everyone! I'm the guest of honor, and the guest of honor says it's time to have some fun!"

It's a scramble, but before he can think twice everyone is laughing and tripping over themselves getting to the floor, and before the buzz can come back the music is going and everyone is enjoying themselves. Everyone but the woman in his arms.

"You're drunk." She growls low in his ear, in a voice that is anything but arousing.

"No one will notice. You know I'm a good drunk." He tilts her chin to look at him. "And if they do notice, they'll just think I'm drunk on love. It wouldn't be that far from the truth, you know."

Her every muscle goes tense underneath his hands.

"Don't you dare make that comparison again." She says in a quiet, deadly voice, that sends something cold right into his stomach.

They make their excuses not long after that and exit to the sound of applause, but the ride back to Malibu is a stony one. When Tony reaches out and takes Pepper's hand, she lets him, but she doesn't squeeze his hand back or return his questioning glances. When they get back to the mansion, she gets out of the dress and puts on her pajamas and sits in front of a mirror taking down her hair and removing all her make-up. He stands behind her with his hands on her shoulders and kisses her neck but for the first time in months she doesn't arch her back and turn her head to one side to encourage him or let her lips part in that delicious shivery smile that encourages many more things. Instead she sits motionless under his hands, continuing to get ready for bed as if he's not there.

"Sweetheart - " He begins tentatively, and the word tastes strange and new on his tongue, and he hopes it has the same effect on her that it had on him. "You seem really tense. Do you want a nightcap? I could make you a hot toddy or a white Russian - "

She stands up abruptly, so abruptly that he stumbles back a bit and forgets where the bathroom wall is and nearly falls until he finds it.

"I've had too much to drink to drive home, so I think it'd really be best if I spent the night in the guest bedroom. I'll work on your schedule first thing in the morning so that you have some time off, and then I think I might take some myself. Good night."

And then she's gone, leaving nothing but the haunting scent of her perfume behind. He feels sick abruptly and considers rushing to the toilet, but the feeling passes, so instead he goes to his bed and curls up and tries to understand what just happened, why he can't get those damn tech blueprints to work out so that no one can ever hurt someone else because of him ever again, how to navigate the web of power and mystery at the heart of S.H.I.E.L.D, how to ask Pepper what she felt and saw and thought at that exact moment when the reporter asked about the possibility of heirs to the Stark Empire -

Tony Stark lies there on his bed like that for a long, long while, until at last he can't take it any longer, and then he goes downstairs to the guest bedroom and finds Pepper lying on her side, still awake, like he knew she would be, and he curls himself around her and tells her that he loves her more than life, that he's lost without her, that he'd do anything to make her happy. And she holds him back this time, and lets him bury his face in her shoulder and shake with the sheer weight of everything that's pressing down on him.

"I love you too, I love you too," She murmurs against his dark hair, over and over again like a mantra that can save them both.

"Keep talking to me." He whispers, because her voice is really the only thing keeping him tied down to the here and now. She says many things to him in that bedroom. Sometimes she tells jokes, sometimes stories, sometimes she just catalogues all the things about him that she loves. And finally she turns to the snatches of poetry she remembers from the lit classes she took in college, and one in particular stands out to him before he finally falls asleep:

_Ah, love! Let us be true  
__To one another! For the world, which seems  
__To lie before us like a land of dreams,  
__So various, so beautiful, so new  
__Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light  
__Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;  
__And we are here as on a darkling plain  
__Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight  
__Where ignorant armies clash by night._

And somehow, Pepper's soft voice drowns out the brassy roar of ignorant armies, which he recognizes now as the buzzing in the back of his skull. Tony drifts into sleep utterly at peace.

At least until morning.

* * *

The next morning, things are normal again. He wakes her up demanding to thumb wrestle and when he wins the first one he says best out of three, and when she wins one it becomes best out of five, until they're there for a good half hour just because he refuses to lose. His head hurts something awful afterwards but she knows his favorite hangover cure, and she says nothing as she makes it for him. He rewards her with chocolate chip pancakes and a long morning out on the deck, entwined in the sun, content as two lizards in the desert, with no need for what others deemed normalcy. For the morning, they need only each other.

Then Agent Coulson calls, and patches him through to Nick Fury, who proceeds to command him (Tony Stark, commanded!) to go to God knows where to find some general whose attempt to copy a guy named Steve Rogers ended in a rather large green monster who also needed tracking down. He wants to resist - hell, he wants to hang up on the damn man right there - but once again he is treated to a lecture about the widening scope of his responsibilities as a hew member of the superhuman community, and he hears himself agreeing from a distance. But he doesn't feel superhuman when he hangs up. Without his armor, he is nothing - he can be injured, maimed, killed, as easily as any other man. There are many others out there who are as intelligent as he is, who could build a better suit if they ever found out the secrets of his. There are others who aren't half as intelligent as he is who could easily discover that his greatest weakness isn't supplying power to the suit or preventing ice build-up or even the arc reactor - it's the redheaded woman sitting next to him, who has listened to the conversation and is now watching him with an expression that says she's every bit as ready to fight as he is. To wit: he feels anything but superhuman when his conversation with Fury is done. In fact, he feels dangerously fragile.

"He has a government agency at his disposal. He can find Ross and Banner without you. We have more important things on our hands than some pet project of his."

"Who gets to decide that now, Pepper? When I stood up on that podium and told the world that I was a superhero, I changed the game more than I ever realized."

"We gave you the note cards for a reason, Tony," She smiles that wry smile he loves so much.

"Yea," He says. "Yea, I figured that."

They spend a while longer out on the balcony, but they know that Pepper will burn soon and that they can't ignore the world forever, and so they have to head inside soon. And they get inside right when Jarvis informs Tony that there's been an incident in Afghanistan.

The buzz in his skull returns with a vengeance as he straps into his armor, his cloying, damning, constricting armor, and shoots off into a world he barely understands all over again.

* * *

Pepper Potts is waiting again, waiting for Tony to come home, and she knows with the instinct of military wives and sweethearts the world over that this mission is different, that this mission will leave them changed forever, and it makes her numb with fear. Nothing will distract her, and when she tries to conduct business she's listless and unfocused and doesn't quite remember to calculate the time difference between California and Japan and ends up calling at 3am. She doesn't even know what time it is where she is. She cries, for the first time in a long time. She cries because she knows something is wrong, something is going to happen, but she doesn't know what it is.

She does know that the man she fell in love with is slipping away from her even as he tells her he loves her, that he made himself change too much too fast and now he's paying the price. She knows that she's tasted alcohol on his breath far too often these last weeks. She knows that she should've slapped him across his face and told him to get help before it's too late - she knows that it might already be too late - but goddamn it she loves him so much and she trusted him to know his limits, to know that something is wrong.

He returns - thank god, he returns. But instead of his usual neat arc and careful landing, he spins dizzily out of control, slamming into the ceiling and then onto the hood of one of his cars before rolling to the ground, where he remains, motionless. For a moment she's too paralyzed with fear and confusion to do anything, but when he staggers to his feet and starts moving towards the robots she regains her ability to move and helps him get there. He can barely stand; his armor is riddled with bullet holes, and part of the suit is dented by his collision with the ceiling and god knows what else.

"Jarvis, does he need an ambulance?" She calls hoarsely.

"Miss Potts, I am unable to give you information of his condition. He shut me out of the suit during the fight and hasn't given me access again. My sensors now indicate that his vitals are exhibiting behavior consistent with high stress and alcohol levels."

And sure enough, once she's helped him out of his suit and onto his cot, her searching hands reveal nothing worse than he's come home with before. And he reeks of alcohol.

"Pepper?" He murmurs. "Pepper, I couldn't stop them. I couldn't. There were so many of them and so many civilians and I couldn't protect them and I couldn't get to the second cache in time and - and I tried so hard and I just couldn't do it all, not all of it, and they won, Pepper, I lost that village, and I - I couldn't think straight enough to fly home so I took a bottle of gin and I think I drank the whole thing and then I came back here to you…"

As she sits there listening to him, watching the minute movements of the body that seems to belong to her more than her own, Pepper Potts feels something shifting and settling inside of her, the way she felt it back in July, when he asked her if she'd ever been to summer camp. She can't believe that was the same man who lies before her now, shattered, incoherent, so utterly lost. She can't save him, for all that he once called her his little superhero. She can't save him anymore than he could save those villagers. Only he can save himself now. And she loves him - oh, she loves him - and it breaks her heart to do it, but she knows it must be done.

"Pepper?" He murmurs. "Pepper, am I home?"

"Not yet, Tony," She whispers back, too hollow to cry. "Not yet."

* * *

When Tony Stark wakes up on the cot in his garage, he remembers nothing of what happened. He has vague feelings - of confusion, of failure, of fear - and some images of fire and bullets and screaming children, and then two sad blue eyes. It isn't until he is violently sick all over the floor and sprayed with flame retardant from his overexcited dummy and aware of the scattered pieces of the suit and the empty bottle on the floor before him that he realizes that he shut out the AI he created himself when it told him that the mission was hopeless, that he drank an entire bottle of gin before he crossed the widest ocean in the world in a suit that had a hundred times the destructive capacity of a car and destroyed yet another of his prized projects in the process of landing it.

And then he realizes, without even really knowing how, but knowing it all the same because of the cold hard knot in his spine, that Pepper is gone.

* * *

A/N - ….please don't kill me? Go and read the entirety of "Dover Beach" (by Matthew Arnold) instead. It's a fantastic poem. It'll make you forget what a horrible person I am.


	6. The Thirteenth Step, Part I

**Disclaimer** - Don't own _Iron Man_. Don't own _the Incredible Hulk _(not that I much want to).

**Summary** - Tony Stark has never played by the rules, and his recovery from alcoholism will be no exception.

**A/N - **Well, as it stands, I believe that this is the last chapter of our little fic. Then again, it _was _supposed to be a one-shot, which means that you guys have more power over me than I want to admit… If I get some more ideas they might be added, but as of now I consider this the end. I hope it is an enjoyable end!

It's true about Nate's name - it shows up as misspelled on my word processor.

Also, I know that the movie made Howard Stark seem like quite a goodie-two-shoes, but in the comics he was an alcoholic, and I chose to run with that here.

Once more, for my Darling, who only says I can cheat on him with Tony because he knows I never will (and not just because Tony doesn't exist).

* * *

_The Thirteenth Step_

When Pepper is gone, Tony shuts off Jarvis and drinks through all the alcohol in his house. He is sick for days with the poisoning, but there's no one to call an ambulance because no one's there. He alchemizes his love for her into hatred with that alcohol, with the burn as it goes down, with the ache of his stomach after he's thrown it all back up again. When Pepper is gone, Tony finally lets himself go. And, for the first time in his life, he has to pick up the pieces all by himself. It has been a week after that mission when he turns Jarvis back on with a mumbled apology.

"A memo has been waiting for you, sir. It's from Miss Potts." And despite his carefully crafted hate, his heart flutters at the name. "She informs you that you are on a two week vacation, effective now. All of your affairs are in order, and she will ensure that they remain so."

All he can do is nod in disappointment, and try in vain to continue hating her for leaving. It's harder without the alcohol. Without the alcohol it's hard to do anything, including (ironically) go out and buy more alcohol. So for another two days, he starves himself sober. Then, mysteriously, Jarvis informs him that he has just accepted a delivery from an online grocery service, and that he suggests he eat something.

When Pepper is gone, Tony learns to feed himself. He takes the food that was delivered without question and starts to make something out of it. The first thing he tries is a grilled cheese sandwich. It comes out wretchedly burnt, because halfway through its preparation he loses himself in thoughts of _her_, but he eats it anyway, chewing through the blackened bread as if it were a penance.

After the escapade of the grilled cheese, he puts the rest of the groceries away, and as he does so, wonders who could have sent them. Jarvis is most likely smart enough to order them himself, and it is the most logical explanation, so he makes sure to thank him.

"You're welcome, sir," The A.I. responds after a slight pause. Tony is too tired to analyze the hesitation. Connection with anyone and anything is hard without the alcohol. He decides to finish with the groceries and then go back down to the bowels of his house and sleep on a cot, because sleeping in his own bed would be too hard without her. Then he gets to the last bag, opens it, and discovers that it contains a bottle of vodka.

Now he's more confused than ever - if Jarvis ordered these to help Tony recover, why would he also order more of what got him here in the first place? He doesn't ask, feeling the need to get as far away from that opaque bottle of Absolut as fast as he can.

He lies on his back in the garage for two hours before he goes back up and pours himself a glass. This time, it's himself he hates.

* * *

When Pepper is gone, Tony decides that he's going to find his own way out of this hole. She would have told him to go to Alcoholics Anonymous, had she been there, and he decides just to spite her that he's going to do this his own way. And it's through that decision that he finally admits there was a problem to begin with.

He doesn't include that admission in his little program. The first step, he decides, was to punish himself with what alcohol was left. The second was learning to feed himself. This one becomes an ongoing step, as he looks up recipes online to use up all the food that was brought to him. More often than not, they come out little better than the grilled cheese did, but he still eats every bite. At every meal he takes out the bottle of vodka and places it across the table from him, where Pepper would've sat, if she wasn't gone. It stares him down, like the hollow eye of a loaded gun.

Usually he manages to put it back when he's done. On a bad day, when he realizes that today would've been their five month anniversary (and she thinks he doesn't know), if she wasn't gone, he goes through three glasses of it right after breakfast. Later, when he's sober again, he reminds himself that it's his fault she's gone, not hers. That is step number three.

The lack of contact with the outside world begins to make Tony feel like a ghost, and in search of something to make him feel real again, he wanders the halls of his mansion, running his fingertips along walls and eying paintings and struggling to remember what once made this place feel like home, because now it just feels like a place, a rest stop on a long, long highway. He begins to question why he planned for so many guest rooms, because there were never guests to fill them. At least not the kind that stayed. He decides that he's going to change that - that he will either find more guests to invite or change the rooms. He will make this house mean more than it has.

Later that night he realizes that it was Pepper who made it feel like home - the sound of her heels, her bitching about the music, her taste in art. This is step four.

By the end of his first week of vacation, Tony has finished new plans for his house, learned to make an Italian egg sandwich, and drunk only five glasses of vodka. He starts to feel good about himself again, when he's watching a marathon of some old TV show. Then he realizes that his arm is resting on the back of the couch instinctively, looking for someone to cradle against him. But she's gone.

He remembers that feeling of utter loneliness later in the week when he finally answers Nick Fury's increasingly violent calls and goes in search of this General Ross fellow, when he sees him sitting at the bar all alone drunk off his ass. First he feels contempt - though for himself or the general he isn't really sure - and then pity. And as he reminds Ross that they're not alone in this game, he is reminding himself too. When he says 'we', it forces him to accept that as much as he'd like to work alone, he can't. He has become part of a bigger picture. He accepts that. Step five.

For the second week of his vacation, he needs something more to occupy his time. He decides to buy another car, to replace the one he smashed after that mission, and now he spends all of his time revitalizing it, the back of his head murmuring that other things are renewing too. Seven days covered in grease and banging his head on fenders and falling asleep on the skateboard relax him more than any bottle ever did. He had forgotten how relaxing restoration was for him in the maze of new obligations he'd created for himself, and he now he vows that he'll never lose sight of that comfort and enjoyment again. The finished car is considered step six; he is halfway there.

At this halfway point, he dives back into work, and, as promised, the transition is swift and very nearly painless. He hasn't fallen too far behind on any of the projects, their stock has remained stable, and no one gives him any sidelong glances that he notices. The painful moment is when he reaches his office and sees a man sitting at Pepper's desk. Even though Tony stops where he is and gives him a look that would melt the flesh from the bones of most human beings, he gets to his feet and offers his hand.

"My name is Nate. Ms. Potts is taking a vacation and requested that I fill in for her until she returns."

"And when will that be?"

"She hasn't decided yet."

"Good to meet you," He lies, shaking Nate's hand before going into his office and finding his favorite bottle of brandy waiting and pouring himself a glass, all before he remembers the six steps he's taken away from that night. Right now, staring at the dark hair of a man that should be the woman he loves, he feels the fresh pain of her desertion all over again. Impotent rage follows immediately on the heels of the sorrow, as it does so often, because the way he understood it a break-up was a mutual decision, and she'd taken that power from him, left him without closure or a lifeline.

Then he remembers that he knows where she lives, and that he could just go home and get in the hot rod and drive to her condo and honk the horn, and she'd come to the door, he knows it. She'd come to the door and he'd smile that smile that he knows makes her weak in the knees, and he knows she'd get in the car with him, and they could drive to the movie theater and see some crappy movie and get back to the way things should be, and he wouldn't even have to ask her forgiveness, because she would've given it with a butterfly-soft touch of her fingertips on his wrist as he drove.

But he knows he can't do that, because it would be taking advantage of how much she loves him - loved him? Who'd have known that two words could make his heart hurt so much, like the shrapnel was pressing closer in spite of the arc reactor's strength? And as Tony settles his hand over the machine that keeps him alive, he forces himself to recognize that it was the alcohol that took the option off the table, not her, the one who made staying alive worthwhile.

He stands up and takes the bottle of brandy that he's been nursing in that desk for years and walks to his bathroom and pours all of it down the drain.

"Step seven." He murmurs. And sure, it's pretty similar to step three, but he always knew he was thick-headed. She did too. She always knew how to get through to him. And that's when he finds himself going back into the office and picking up his phone and dialing her number, his heart pounding.

"Hello?"

He hangs up, like some goddamn sixteen year old. She has caller ID. She knew it was him. And she picked up, knowing it was him. But she doesn't call back.

He lets himself hurt a little bit longer before he decides to find out what's on his schedule for today. When he looks over to Nate's desk, his temp is on the phone, his hand gestures and facial features seeming to convey an animated discussion. Tony braces himself for some minor catastrophe - but when Nate hangs up, he makes no move to relay a call into his office or even approach. Tony stews behind his desk for a while before the inadequate replacement enters his office.

"Your schedule for the day, sir." He says, handing him two sheets of paper. "I'll be at my desk if you need me."

"You're not going to brief me?" Tony demands, like a child going without his bedtime story. Nate is taken aback.

"I could if you'd like, sir, but I'll need those papers back…"

"Never mind." He grumbles, waving him away.

Nate doesn't even have the damn thing memorized. And he did it on two pieces instead of one - he _hates _it that way. Pepper always managed to make it fit onto one. Right off he sees that he needs to write a brief on the latest technologies for some interested buyers, and that he's set to meet with them after lunch. As he sets about it, he imagines that meeting - imagines referring them to speak with his assistant _Nate_ for another appointment - Nate Nate Nate, what kind of a name is that anyway? When he types it onto his word processor, it is scored with an angry red line of error. Damn straight it was an error. Why was Pepper gone?

Because of him.

And that's when he wants to crawl down the drain and drink every last golden drop he'd thrown away so carelessly. He wants it the way he wants her - every pore on his skin, every follicle on his scalp craves her, craves a drink, craves anything that will realign the cosmos and get the world working again.

Lucky for him, that moment of temptation is when Jarvis sends a message to his computer informing him of illicit activity in South America.

He goes outside to inform his assistant whose name is an error no matter how many times he types it that he's off to try and kill himself, and when he sticks his head out the door he hears that the man is speaking in a low, urgent voice, and sounds rather annoyed. When Tony clears his throat loudly, Nate all but drops the phone, and hangs up hastily anyway.

"I'm so sorry, sir, did you need something?"

"Who was that phone call from?"

"…it was nothing important."

"So it was personal, huh? Your girlfriend or something?"

Nate, whose name he will forever envision as underlined in red, is staring at him like he's got an enormous horn in the middle of his forehead. He hates it when his assistants have their own lives. He hates it that his own found it so easy to walk out of his.

"I'll be gone for the rest of the day. Something urgent has come up. You can leave and deal with your girlfriend in person."

He doesn't even wait to hear his good-bye. He gets in his car and drives back to the mansion and suits up in record time. Makes damn good time to South America too. He doesn't even register the name of the country he's fighting in - he just locks in on the stockpiled weapons and embraces the rush of adrenaline. Here he is certain - he knows just when to use the reactors and how, and he neatly dovetails his movements to get the maximum result from his efforts. This could be his new alcohol, his new Pepper - maybe he'd been wrong about superheroes needing super-girlfriends. Maybe he'd be able to do more, save more people, without worrying about leaving someone behind. He'll live for saving others now.

When he sees the one bungalow he didn't get to in time go up in flames and hears the screams of the family inside, he knows that this new drug is as perilous as the others. He will never be able to save everyone - and if he doesn't have a home to return to after nights like these, he'll lose himself within a year. That's the eighth step - he's three quarters of the way through his improvised rehabilitation. He can feel the frayed edges knitting together, but it worries him that he doesn't know the twelfth step, that he can't visualize what will finally make him whole. He worries that everything just might fall apart.

"Jarvis, call Pepper's cell." He says when he's over New Mexico, hurtling towards an empty mansion. His whole head rings when the A.I. complies, rings so loudly that he shouts out to cancel the order.

Jarvis makes sure the lights are on when he arrives, but that doesn't make his house seem any more welcoming.

"I'm home." He calls.

"I can see that, sir," Jarvis replies dryly.

There is a hesitation. "It doesn't feel that way."

To this, Jarvis has nothing to say. It's not because Tony programmed him without emotions. It's just that some emotions are shamed by words.

He walks into the kitchen and sees a fresh batch of groceries waiting for him. He's puzzled - if Jarvis was 'with' him, focusing on the mission, he couldn't have been ordering groceries at the same time, unless he'd done so before they left. But when he opens one of the milk cartons and sniffs it, it doesn't smell as if it's been sitting in his kitchen for hours. So Jarvis was not his mysterious benefactor.

As he puts away the groceries, it occurs to him that there was one very simple suspect he hadn't thought of before. He's on his cell phone five minutes later, and only realizes that it's four in the morning when he hears how sleepy the murmured answer of 'Rhodes' is.

"Hey, it's me. Could you come over?"

"Uh huh. Be there in half an hour."

There isn't even a hesitation, although they haven't spoken at all since Pepper left, and Tony realizes just how lucky he is to have a best friend like James Rhodes. "Thanks, man. Sorry I woke you up."

The colonel laughs. "Since when has that ever stopped you?"

Half an hour later he's there, and Tony realizes he isn't even sure why he wanted him to be there. It's awkward at first when James shuffles through the door and plops on the couch and looks at Tony expectantly, because he hadn't even realized how much there really was to say. At first he just sits down next to him and rests his chin in his hands, staring at the dead TV.

"She's gone." He says, because it's always on his mind, rattling in the back of his head like the proverbial skeleton in the closet.

"Yea, I know."

"Did she contact you?"

"Yea, the night of the mission. I would've come sooner to kick the shit out of you, but she convinced me that it was better to wait until you came to me."

"Thanks, but I already feel like the shit has been kicked out of me without your help."

And, slowly, he tells James everything he's realized over the last two weeks. How he almost killed himself trying to shut out what was wrong, how he taught himself to take care of himself without her, how it's really his fault she's gone, that he has a house and not a home, that Iron Man doesn't exist in a vacuum but has responsibilities to the world at large, that amidst all of this he still needs to find time to enjoy himself, that he has to be strong enough to pour out the brandy when what he really wants is to drink it down himself, and, most recently, that he can't save everyone, that looking for happiness behind an iron mask (even if it's really a gold titanium alloy) is just as dangerous as searching for it at the bottom of empty bottles.

James doesn't say anything at first - in fact, he doesn't say anything at all for a while. It should be awkward again, sitting there on the couch together with the dead glassy eye of the turned off TV staring them down, but it isn't. Tony's ribcage feels lighter than it did before, because now he's said it all to someone and it makes a little more sense, the way all of his steps overlap. This moment of understanding and reconnection becomes step number nine.

"You remember how I told you I was proud of you before all of this?" Rhodey says at last. Tony nods. "That never changed. Even when Pepper called me and told me how you were falling apart. But still no homo, man."

They end up sitting there just talking about the past until dawn, when Tony realizes it's time to start a new day. He apologizes to Rhodey once more for the late night and then decides to make some coffee, so he's awake enough to deal with Nate.

"Take the day off, Tony." His friend tells him as he begins his preparations. "If it's one thing you and Pepper can take out of this, it's just how much you could use some vacation."

It's the first time they've actually spoken her name, and it feels like a dagger in his gut. She's gone, and he has no idea if she'll ever come back. Rhodey's words fill him with a flicker of hope, though.

"When is she coming home?" He asks, for once unashamed of the naked need in his voice.

Rhodey pauses before answering. "That's up to you, Anthony. I'll be seeing you."

He's gone, and the house is empty once more. Tony pours out the water he'd been preparing to alchemize into coffee and sits at the table and rests his head in his hands. He'd put away the mysterious groceries - which he'd forgotten to thank Rhodey for - before the colonel arrived that night. He'd left the bottle of vodka out now, and it was joined by the other bottle, the one that'd come with the first batch of groceries. The two of them - one for her and one for James - sat there watching him as he fought the need to open one and drain it down so he could sleep and forget. But he knew now that he wouldn't do it. Because Rhodey had said that it was up to him when she came home - and if he had it his way, once she came back, she'd never leave again.

* * *

December slinks by quietly until it's time for the annual Christmas party once more. By then, the rumors are considerable. Everyone has noticed that Pepper Potts hasn't been in the office for a month and the tabloids are speculating a pregnancy and an abortion, abusive behavior, an affair on her part, every manner of vice and avarice but alcoholism. He finds it funny. He hopes she does to. He couldn't bear it if he'd caused her any more pain.

He calls her once a week, just to hear her say 'hello?'. He always hangs up afterwards. At first he wonders if she wants him to come to her, the way he came to Rhodey, but he doesn't think he can. He doesn't feel worthy of her anymore - how he ever did feel worthy of her is beyond him. He feels ashamed even when he just sits back and closes his eyes and remembers lazy mornings at her side, tracing patterns in her skin while she sleeps. He never deserved something that perfect, as broken as he is. That doesn't mean he won't try to make it right, because he does with every breath he takes. He just doesn't think he'll ever get there. Tony Stark, who used to think six steps ahead of everything, who once imagined blue rooms designed entirely around her, can't visualize the twelfth step of his new life, the one that will make him whole enough for her once more.

That's when he decides he's going to make an announcement at the party about what he's gone through. He knows that doing so will unlock a whole new circle of hell - the board will question his competence yet again, the tabloids will have themselves another field day, there'll be a dozen daily requests for interviews and speeches. But if it brings her back to him, if only to yell at him for all the new paperwork he's going to put her through, it'll be worth every lick of the flames.

The night of the party he dresses in his nicest suit and tie, forgoing the sillier ones of Christmas past. He doesn't write a speech or even plan one in his head, because she's not there to goad him into doing so. He feels calm and at peace as he goes, a feeling he associates with the knowledge that he's doing the right thing. It's also probably the way a martyr facing the firing squad feels.

Then he sees her standing at the entrance to the Ritz Carlton, waiting for him. He hasn't seen her in a month and she's just _standing _there, like it's perfectly right and natural, like he's late and she's been impatiently expecting him, like she never left. And in that instant, all of his careful calm is gone. He stops right where he is, and lets the fifty he was tipping the valet with flutter to the ground. His heart speeds up painfully.

He'd forgotten, though he'd never thought it possible, how beautiful she is. She's dressed in green silk and her hair is piled up on top of her head in an intricate mass of curls and she's looking right at him with those eyes that have haunted his dreams. And though two thousand years of society have proclaimed men to be the superior race, he feels like falling to his knees before her and offering every last inch of himself to her, and he knows that for two thousand years society has had it all wrong.

Since it doesn't look like he's going to be coming any closer to her any time soon, she starts walking towards him, and his first instinct is to take a step back. He wasn't ready for this - he hasn't even gone up and addressed the party the way he intended. She sees his frantic backward motion and a look of hurt crosses her eyes and for a moment the hate he'd nurtured in those first days swells up - what right has she to be hurt, when she's the one that left? But she's stronger than he is, so she swallows the pain and closes the distance.

"I've been waiting for you, you know." She says. He manages a nod, and offers her his arm. Her small hand, the one that had once played Operation with his life, rests on his forearm and there are no words for what he feels anymore. He looks straight ahead as they enter the hotel and migrate towards the ballroom, but she glances at him every couple of steps, searching for something.

When they reach the ballroom she starts to guide him towards the head table, intending to sit by him. People are glancing towards them, of course, and there's even a smattering of applause at the entrance of the CEO. Pepper is nodding and smiling at those who address them like some goddamned society wife, and he starts to feel angry again. But by then she's already guided him to sit down and she's sitting beside him. Thank god, Rhodey is there too, and he's seated on Tony's other side. Some pleasant small talk begins to float around the table and dinner is served, and Tony knows he's being decidedly unfriendly - but, dammit, he was always like this when he was young, shy and uncertain of things that weren't machines, and it was the alcohol that helped him loosen up, and what will he do now without it?

"Aren't you going to help James tell your story about that karaoke bar and a certain _Top Gun_ impression, Tony?" Pepper says, jerking him out of his thoughts. He could do it with her, the thought is inescapable. But is she really his anymore? She walked away and then came back with no explanation. She's holding all the cards and he doesn't like that, because he might not be very good at relationships but he's pretty damn sure that an equal partnership is the healthy way to go.

He obliges her, because Rhodey is looking on too, and soon the flow of conversation around their table is comfortable enough. But he is conspicuously drinking only water, and he knows that when dinner is done it'll be time for his yearly speech. He's nauseous with fear. He'd rehearsed the images in his mind on the ride there, but never once had they included her, and he doesn't know how he'll face her when he's done.

In the end, he gets up before everyone is done with dinner, just to get it over with, and when people see him moving towards the podium they begin to tap the rims of their champagne flutes and soon the ballroom is filled with the sound of a wedding, even though he feels more like he's headed to his execution. He's never wished more for note cards in his life. But when he reaches the podium and looks out over the audience and catches her eye, and remembers that this is all for her, he feels himself calming once more. It wouldn't be half as fun with the note cards anyway.

"Ladies and gentlemen of Stark Industries, I'd like to thank you all for being here tonight at the lovely Ritz Carlton. I hope everything has been up to your standards, and if not, let me know, because with the kind of numbers we're pulling in the stock market I think we can afford to pay for better." The cheers start to make him feel sick again. These people who admire and respect him as their CEO may lose their feelings of admiration and respect in a few short minutes. There's still time to abort his mission; no one would be the wiser. Except for him. So he continues.

"This year has been one of great change for Stark Industries. We have taken our company in an entirely new direction, moving from destruction to renewal. We have nearly doubled the number of charitable causes we contribute to and our engineers have won top honors for their ingenuity and progressive thinking." More applause. His heart pounds a little faster. He waits for silence before he goes on. "It hasn't been a year without its challenges. The transformation from weapons manufacturer hasn't been easy. We've drawn fire for our new policies, both within our great nation and without. But I believe that as we sit here today, celebrating the end of this year of change, things can only continue to look up for us."

Normally, this would be where he'd crack jokes about getting drunk and making some embarrassing memories for next year's talk around the break room, and then they'd start the dancing and he'd find someone to take up to the penthouse suite with him. He could still say those things and step down. But he doesn't.

"The changes this year brought for Stark Industries are mirrored by the changes it brought for me personally, and I know that my personal life is normally the divine right of the tabloids and not my Christmas party speech, but I think it's time that, as your CEO and your coworker and, in many cases, your friend, I talk a little about it myself.

"You all know that my impromptu vacation to Afghanistan opened my eyes to the effect our weapons were having on the world around us. What you don't know is that facing death opened my eyes to the emptiness of my own life. It's no secret the way I used to live, or that I've changed since then. The truth is, I thought that I was done changing a few months ago." He takes a steadying breath. "I was lying to myself, and to everyone around me. The truth is, the changes this year brought to Stark Industries and to my personal life were taking a heavy toll on me, and I went about coping with the stress the wrong way. For the last several months, and even before that, I suffered from alcoholism."

There's no gasp or influx of chatter. Instead, the room goes deathly still. He chances to glance at Pepper and sees that her normally pale face is white as bone, and that her hand is clenched on Rhodey's forearm. The colonel, for his part, looks sternly around the room, as if daring anyone to ridicule his best friend. Tony takes a deep breath and stares down at the podium when he continues.

"I came to this realization through a lot of pain, and even now as I recover, I am still struggling to understand how I allowed this to happen to myself, and how I am going to ensure that it never happens again. But I have faith that with the support of such fine people as are sitting before me in this ballroom tonight, I can make it through this difficult period of my life and make a fresh start, an even brighter one than ever before."

He raises his glass and there's a heart-stopping pause before everyone else follows suit.

"To new beginnings." He says.

"To new beginnings." Everyone repeats, a sonorous heave of sound followed by the delicate clink of champagne glasses.

After Tony takes a deep swig, he bows slightly at the waist and walks off of the podium, and in that pause before the band strikes up with the first dance of the night he hears far more applause and cheering than he ever expected to. He waves and smiles halfheartedly in the direction of the admiration, but it doesn't dispel the emptiness in his stomach. He feels like crawling back into the cave in Afghanistan and curling up there, wounded beyond repair, and waiting for the car battery to die so that the shrapnel can reach its destination at last.

Most people have gotten up to begin dancing and drinking - and discussing the fact that their CEO is doing neither - so he doesn't have a hard time slinking off to the balcony, which looks down over a long stretch of moonlit beach. The ocean is black with night and the stars are veiled by fog; it's quite cold for a Californian December. He's enjoying the melancholy loneliness of the cliffs and the unstoppable waves when he hears a rustle of silk and knows that she's behind him.

"You've just created one hell of a headache for me, you know that?"

He can't help but smile, however bitterly. He knows her too well. He doesn't turn around to look at her when he speaks.

"Well, I'm sure Nate will deal with the situation with perfect adequacy."

There is silence for a moment and then that silky rustle once more as she takes another step closer.

"Don't be like this, Tony. Please."

"You left me." He says, and there's more heartbreak in his voice than he ever wanted to reveal. "You left me when I needed you most."

"I had to." Her voice is shivery with tears. "I wasn't strong enough to save you and I wasn't strong enough to watch you fall to pieces. I knew that if I left you'd have to save yourself." She takes another step closer and now her hand is on his arm and she's turning him to face her, and he could fight but he knows he doesn't want to. "And you have, Tony. You've come so far."

She stands there before him with moonlight in her hair and forgiveness in her eyes and equal parts of him want to kiss her and shake her by the shoulders. He masters both urges in a deep breath and manages to speak again, and asks her the question that has haunted him for over a month.

"Did you love me, that night when you left?"

She has to look away for a moment, and when she looks back he can see that her eyes are red.

"I don't think I'd ever loved you more."

There's nothing either of them can say after that, and so they stand there at the balcony, looking out over the ocean. They do not touch, and to look at them from afar one would think they are strangers. But to stand anywhere near them was to know the circle of pain and love both that bound them where they stood - unable to move closer, and certain to die if they did not.

It's then that the band begins the quavering opening notes of Moon River, the famous waltz from _Breakfast at Tiffany's_, and neither of them can help smiling at the memory of watching it late one Saturday night and then awakening the next morning to reenact the opening scene. He'd wanted to buy her half of Tiffany's before lunch, but she talked him down to a simple diamond tennis bracelet engraved with her initials and the date. She's wearing it now, he realizes, and he extends his hand to hers. She smiles a little and takes his offer, and they dance slowly, tenderly together on the balcony, because everything is new and fresh with hurt, but by the end of the dance her head is on his chest and his arms are around her and they aren't dancing so much as they are just holding each other.

"Come back to work, Pepper," He murmurs against her hair. "At least do that much."

She nods and smiles. "I will."

_Step ten. _Tony thinks to himself. It isn't much - but it is a beginning.

* * *

A/N- Happy times are almost here again! This chapter ended up being twenty pages long, so I decided to split it into two parts. Continue on to the next for our conclusion!


	7. The Thirteenth Step, Part II

**A/N**- Here's part two of the last chapter. Enjoy the return of a bit of fluff!

I apologize if any of you with alerts for this story got two notifications for the updates - I posted them without editing, realized it, deleted them, edited them, and posted them again. They're better off for it.

This part is dedicated to a certain friend of mine who admitted she's been reading this without reviewing, then had the gall to tell me I'd better update it soon - because I still love her to bits and pieces anyway (and because I said "I'll have it up by Saturday!" and yet it's been twelve days since then…)

* * *

_The Thirteenth Step_

The reaction to his revelation is immediate and varied. Over the Christmas holidays, the average TV viewer may sit down with his cup of eggnog and watch as half the pundits rip Tony Stark to shreds and the other half tout him as a model of courage. The tabloids, naturally, focus on his relationship with Pepper - they haunt the entrance to her condo and note with sadistic glee that she no longer goes over to the Stark mansion and on the other page run testimonies from women who claim to have slept with Tony when he was an alcoholic like it's some badge of honor, the same as saying that they once fought in the Great War, something to tell the grandkids about.

Three things in particular from these media disturb him: a picture of Pepper having coffee with Nate, subtitled as a sign of new romance, that he doesn't remember many of the women who reputedly slept with him, but he can't say definitively that they're lying, and the article which muses on whether or not his admission is proof that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, which shows the last picture taken of him and his father together before that car accident.

When he sees the picture, he's surprised he hadn't wondered about it before. Nate did a perfectly adequate job as an assistant, because he already knew Pepper's system. Where had Pepper found him anyway? Was it possible that she'd moved on so soon after leaving him? Or was Nate an old romance waiting to be rekindled?

He doesn't have much time to worry about it, because promptly at 7:30am on January 2nd, Pepper is sitting in her office with her laptop informing him that he has an impressive array of specials on his recent revelations to choose from.

"Hell no to Oprah. Maybe to 20/20. Barbara Walters only if she promises not to _try _and make me cry, because it ain't gonna happen. And Leno for sure, I'd love nothing more than to make fun of myself for a while."

"Pick between 20/20 and Ms. Walters and I'll think about Leno after we see how the board meeting goes."

"Do we _have _to do that board meeting?"

"I must do nothing. You, on the other hand, need to face the music. Hopefully their vacations in Fiji will soften the blow."

"Only if their wives didn't go along."

"What do you keep me around for if not to make sure that the board members and their wives spend as little time together as possible?"

He is filled with a surge of warmth at her smile, but it feels forbidden to be warming to something that might no longer be his. "How did you know Nate, Potts?" He asks. Her smile fades a little in confusion.

"He was a good friend of mine in college. He recently asked me to be his best man when he and his partner got married after it became legal. Don't you remember?"

Suddenly it clicks into place - Pepper waking him up early one morning to kiss him good-bye, already wearing her tux. Later, he'd been too intent on peeling it off of her to listen to the name of the place she went to - he forgot, at the moment, why he hadn't gone with her. He should've. He should've enjoyed every moment he had with her more than he had. And as he walks away, trusting her to keep everything running, he feels the need for something to drink already swelling up in him. It's either that or kiss her, the way he wanted to on the balcony of the Ritz. Either action would quell his confusion.

That's just the problem, of course - he's always seeking to drown himself. Pepper, alcohol, Iron Man, it's all the same urge. She doesn't deserve to be on that list, he realizes. It should be her and her alone. Can he really handle such a thing? It's true that if he gave up Iron Man, handed the suit over to Rhodey, his life would be a lot less complicated. He'd feel that urge to drown himself a lot less. But he spent most of his life making things simple and shutting off all the background noise, and he knows he can never do so again. He has so much to atone for - twelve steps will never be enough. He'll never deserve her.

He goes down to the garage after that and sits there tinkering with the Mark II with the TV on in the background to help him tune out the world, and he's been there for a couple of hours when he hears the Dateline special come on and he hears his father's voice for the first time in twenty years.

"Anthony, are you going to show the camera what you're doing? Come over here and show them." And when he turns around he sees the black and white footage of him with his first circuit board, beaming happily next to his dad.

"He's a chip off the old block, isn't he?" The cameraman asks.

"Yessir, that he is." Howard Stark smiles, putting his arm around his son's shoulders.

Then color blooms across the screen and he's back in the present as a trained broadcast voice asks the listener just how much of a 'chip off the old block' Anthony Stark is, given his recent revelations. The voice goes on to remind the listener of speculations that had always circulated Howard Stark's death and whether or not he'd been drinking when the car crashed.

He doesn't have a chance to hear more, because that's when Pepper bursts into the garage, nearly tripping over her three inch heels in an effort to reach him.

"Don't listen to them Tony - we can sue them for slander any time of the week, you just name the day." She says breathlessly when she reaches him. He feels himself shaking his head as if from a great distance.

"Pepper, they're right. My father was an alcoholic."

He reaches out and turns off the TV, and there's silence in the garage, except for Pepper's breathing and his own. After a moment of this silence, he speaks again.

"Call Happy, Ms. Potts, and tell him he's to take us to the cemetery."

He doesn't need to say which, because there's only one for Tony Stark. They're there within two hours and when Happy turns off the engine and Tony gets out, Pepper hesitates, uncertain of whether her presence is wanted or not.

"I'm expecting a call from Barbara Walter's producer," She stammers a bit. "I could just let it go to voice mail, if you - "

"Go ahead and stay here. I need to speak to my father." She still looks a little forlorn, so he reaches out and squeezes her hand briefly before he exits the car. The forbidden contact steels him for what he has realized he must do.

The graveyard is even more grey than it was before, as if the January sun is even weaker than the September sun had been. He never visits his parents more than once a year and somehow everything seems different today. When he reaches the grassy knoll and the two weeping angels, their faces seem to bear a different expression. It is no longer one of disbelief or mourning: it is one of shame. He stands silently before them for a moment or so before he realizes what he wants to say.

"You were sort of a jerk, Dad. I didn't want to admit it before because I was still a kid when you died and I still thought you were the epitome of all that's good, which is probably why I turned out the way I did, but I've grown up a lot since then, and it's not like I'm not saying you were a horrible person or anything, but you weren't exactly the greatest person either. And I don't have to spend all my time trying to grow up and fill your shoes anymore because it turns out we wear the same size."

He scuffs his toe against the grass at the foot of their graves, feeling twelve years old all over again. "Look, you did what you thought was best for mom and I. You gave us everything that money could buy and did what you thought would make the world safe for us. Maybe that was the strain that got to you the way it started getting to me. I'm not going to let that happen anymore. I'm going to be the best I can be for Pepper."

He stares up into the face of the stone angel, as if expecting it to raise its hand in benevolence and bless him, offer its understanding. But his father has been dead for twenty years, and stone doesn't understand forgiveness. Still, he feels lighter, because he knows that somehow, somewhere, Howard Stark does.

"See you in September," He says, and then adds after a hesitation: "I love you."

Step eleven.

* * *

When he gets back to the car, Pepper appears to be on pins and needles waiting for him. Her eyes search his face immediately when he sits down and something inside her seems to crumple when she's done. Before he can ask her what's wrong, she makes a little sound and launches herself across the distance between them, takes hold of him by the shoulders, and kisses him so hard he forgets his own name.

And for thirty seconds, everything is right again in the world, but he has to push her away so he can look her in the eye and try to understand what's happening. She only lets him get a few inches of space and a few moments of clarity before she's kissing him again, holding him so tight he can barely breathe, and he no longer has the strength to stop her. He missed her more than he ever thought, he realizes, and his hands shake as he pulls her onto his lap and then runs his fingers through her hair. He missed her the way a drowning man misses oxygen, the way a prisoner misses the sun. He feels like he's been on sensory depravation for an entire month now and doesn't know where to begin reacquainting himself with the world: through the touch of her hands on his face, through the scent of her skin, through the sound of her soft moans, through the taste of her lips. He knows it's more than animal lust that has him so overwrought. It is love, in its purest, most painful form.

He knows he should pull away again, ask her what's going on, try and determine what he's feeling, but he's a damned man being offered salvation, and only an idiot would push that away with both hands. Of course, while he's a genius, he's had his moments of pure insanity before too.

"Happy, we're going to take Ms. Potts home," He croaks out when he manages to pull himself away. "And take the toll road, will you? I want to get there as soon as possible."

Stunned, she withdraws from his lap and tries to smooth her hair back into some semblance of order. "What's going on?" She asks, her voice as shaky as he feels.

"I might well ask you the same thing."

She looks crushed again, which isn't what he'd expected. "Isn't it - don't you - you don't understand?"

"I think I do, and that's why Happy is going to take you home."

The confusion dissipates and the Pepper he knows, whose hair fits her all too well, is sitting before him in all her cold fury.

"But I want you."

He'd be lying if he said the words didn't make his slacks seem even less comfortable than before. As before, when she kissed him, he knows she doesn't just mean in the sense of lust, but after a month apart it's what they've been reduced to - two animals clawing each other out of impatience and need and confusion, and it's the last thing he wants.

"We're going to do this right, Pepper, just like we did before." He says.

Diffused, she sits back against the leather seats and stares straight ahead. He reaches across the seats and offers his hand as if in apology. After a moment or so, she takes it, and they maintain that connection alone for the rest of the drive. When they reach her condo, he walks out with her, still hand in hand, and like two high schoolers at the end of their first date they stop at the door and just look each other in the eye, not knowing what happens next. Tony then bends down and plants the softest of kisses on her cheek, and whispers on her ear:

"Be ready by six."

There's a jauntiness in his step as he goes back to the car and gets in. He knows what step twelve is now.

* * *

At six o'clock on the dot, Tony is knocking on Pepper's door. She exits to find a bouquet of flowers that nearly obscures his grin.

"Hi," She stammers as he hands them to her, and then kisses the back of her other hand.

"Shall we?" Is all he says in reply, as he walks down the steps and opens the door to a car she's never seen before.

"Is this one new?"

"Yup. I bought it and refurbished it while you were recovering."

She can't help but flinch at his choice of words. When he showed up on her doorstep looking the way he did, she'd hoped she could go back to pretending that nothing had happened, that the last month was just a bad, bad dream. Now there's no hope of pretending, and that fear that has possessed her all day bubbles up again. She has forgiven him for what happened, but she's not sure she can forget.

"Hey there," his voice recalls her to the present, as does his hand on hers. "Don't let it get to you, Potts. Tonight is going to be great."

He's about to withdraw his hand but she clutches it tightly instead, because in the last weeks she's needed the simple touch of his hand the way he used to need alcohol.

"You know, this baby ain't automatic. I kinda need that hand if we're gonna get this show on the road."

"What, you're a modern Da Vinci and you still haven't found a way to drive one-handed?"

"Well, Da Vinci had a thing for little boys. Now seriously, I need my hand." But just before he pries it loose he looks her in the eye. "I'm not going anywhere if you're not, Pepper."

And there it is again - that sweet clench in her chest that is equal parts pain and love. How will they ever sort through these pieces when she can't even stand to start looking? She loves him and he loves her but he's done her wrong and she's done him wrong and it may just be too big a mess for Pepper Potts to handle.

But every time they reach a stop sign that Tony doesn't deign to roll right through, his hand drifts over to touch the back of hers, and everything just feels so damn _right_.

They park the car in the garage, and after he opens her door and helps her out, he leads her over to one of the many worktables, which is miraculously clean. On it are several brightly wrapped packages, one of which appears to be the signature blue bag of Tiffany's.

"All for you, my dear. You'll know what to do once you've opened them." He says, and leaves before she can ask any questions. There was nothing to do but open them, and what she finds leaves her speechless: a black, backless Vera Wang dress, strappy black Prada heels, a shawl from Saks Fifth Avenue, and, last but not least, a pearl necklace and matching earrings. Taped to the top of their box is a note that reads:

_Meet me fully attired on the balcony in fifteen minutes. The rest of my apology awaits._

_T_

Apology? Strangely, she feels like the one that should be apologizing to him, as she strips down in the place where she left him. She's already utterly humbled by his gestures - which is why she had to leave. Pepper Potts, who is possibly the only person in the world that frightens the board of directors, has a weakness for Tony Stark. If she had stayed after that mission to Afghanistan, he would have found a way to make it up to her by morning. He would've kept making it up to her every day and nearly killing himself by night, until they were both trapped in a cycle they were helpless to break free of.

_I had to do it. I had to_. But it doesn't comfort her anymore than it did when she first left.

It's been ten minutes by the time she reapplies her hair and make-up, and then she carefully ascends the stairs from the garage towards the rest of the mansion. She is greeted by the sound of a light sonata, played on the piano, and she rounds a corner to see Tony sitting at the piano bench in his nicest tux, so enveloped in his music that he doesn't even notice her for a moment. She approves of what she sees - he looks much healthier than he did before, much more at peace. But he notices her before she has time to make any other observations, and when his eyes meet hers again, she's ashamed to say her heart misses a beat. His must have too, because he wait's a moment before he goes to her side.

"Words fail, Pepper." He says in lieu of a more traditional compliment, and leads her out onto the balcony.

There she is greeted by the sight of an elegant table for two, complete with candles and a single rose. Their plates are already waiting, although they're covered for now. He leads her to one chair and after she is seated, reveals an ice bucket underneath the tablecloth, from which he withdraws a bottle of Moet and two champagne flutes. After a satisfying pop, he fills both and hands her one.

"This is my first drink in a month, and my last one, too." He says, raising his flute so that the setting sun catches its every facet. "Here's looking at you, kid."

She doesn't like the allusion. Ilsa and Rick are separated at the movie's end. But she still raises her glass and drinks to him, and then at his invitation uncovers her plate, where she finds a chicken breast in a rich white sauce, broccoli, and rice pilaf waiting for her. Her moans at the first bite are positively embarrassing.

"My God - who catered this?"

He grins like the cat that ate the canary. "Actually, no one. I cooked it myself."

"I don't believe you."

"Well, you'd better. Some whack jobs actually call me a genius, you know. I'm not _entirely _incapable of learning something new."

"Really? Prove me wrong and remember that the shipping orders are due at the same time every week."

"I know. Three o'clock Thursday for international, three o'clock Friday for domestic. Nate was absolutely unhelpful, by the way."

"He was supposed to be. I couldn't have you realizing that there might be other assistants out there who could do the same thing I do."

"Believe me, Potts, no one can do the same thing you do. Who could possibly know whether I'm craving a cheeseburger or Mexican or Italian based on what kind of a day I've had?" He pushes himself back from the table and tilts his head, the classic sign of a coming fight.

"I'd be more impressed with someone who could convince you that those aren't the three main food groups." She says, crossing her arms.

"Hey, I made broccoli tonight, didn't I?"

"Yea, and I see all of five pieces of it on your plate."

"Oh, really? Well find me one other assistant who could memorize all of Jarvis's protocols? Hell, another assistant who could actually treat Jarvis like a person!"

"There are some really brainy girls down in tech who're in to stuff like that."

"You hear that Jarvis? Pepper thinks she can get you laid!"

"I'm sure it'd be an enlightening experience, sir," He says dryly.

"Besides, I'd get jealous. You know I expect my assistant's life to revolve around me, self-centered jerk that I am. Oh, and half of them would break their necks walking down the stairs to the garage in their heels balancing eight different color-coded files…"

And somehow, without either of them noticing, things get back to normal. It's dark by the time the conversation winds down, and then Tony thinks to light the candles. As another afterthought, he reaches out and takes her hand and sits there, contemplating her, rubbing her knuckles.

"Let's dance." He says.

"There's no music." She reminds him.

"Doesn't matter."

Of course it doesn't matter, because he's Tony Stark and he does things his way, the rest of the world be damned. So they rise and he takes her in his arms and they dance across the balcony and all the while he keeps looking at her, really looking at her, searching for something.

"I'm sorry." He says finally. "I'm sorry that I was a complete and total ass for far too long. I'm sorry that after I thought I'd stopped being a complete and total ass for far too long, I was still a complete and total ass. Have I mentioned the part where I was a complete and total ass who didn't deserve you at all? Because I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry for leaving you on that rooftop at the benefit and I'm sorry for making things so bad that you had to leave me after the mission to Afghanistan. There aren't enough Vera Wangs and Pradas and Tiffany's necklaces and nice dinners in the world to express how sorry I am for every way I've ever hurt you."

She feels like the wind has been knocked out of her, and in the best of ways. "I never really left, you know."

And as she watches him add it up in his head - the groceries, the constant calls to Nate, Rhodey's preparation - she is reminded that while he is a genius, he is also consummately clueless, and it makes her think of one of her first nights working for him, when he called her frantically into his den to show her something on TV (which she had assumed was nothing short of a nuclear holocaust based on his tone of voice). In the end, he'd just wanted to show her that he'd never noticed that the Disney symbol was in fact a very fancy D. That's when she realizes that although she might never forget what happened, it doesn't matter much. She'd never want to forget a single thing about him.

"Pepper Potts, you do realize that all of the reasons you make a great assistant are also reasons you'd make a great wife, don't you?"

Her heart doesn't skip a beat so much as it trips over itself, because it's beating so fast.

"That depends on what kind of a wife you'd be looking for. Assuming you're in the market for a wife. I could start compiling the profiles of possible candidates tomorrow morning if you'd like."

"You'd be wasting your time. I know what I want."

Her mouth is suddenly dry, and she has to swallow twice before she can speak. "Is that me?"

"Yes." He murmurs, and then again, with more emphasis: "_Yes_."

And rather than answer, because she's choked by tears this time, she leans forward and kisses him. She doesn't think she breaks that kiss for a solid hour, even when they stumble upstairs and make love, even afterwards, when they're lying side by side listening to the forgiving rush of the ocean below them. It ends, of course, and she thinks he's fallen asleep, but then she hears him mutter something that sounds strangely like 'twelve'.

"What was that, sweetheart?" She asks. He just smiles and pulls her close and kisses her once more, like he'll never let her go. And that, he decides later, when she's fallen asleep, is step thirteen on his road to a new life: never letting her go.

_fin_

* * *

A/N- At last! It is done! It was a labor of love, but a long one. I hope you have all enjoyed this fic, as I know I have enjoyed writing it. As it stands for now, this is the end, but that might change abruptly, as rumor has it we're being treated to a special screening of _Iron Man _on my first night of Orientation, which is the 28th, and I might just be inspired to write some more afterwards. For now: good night and good luck! Thanks for your support!

Verona


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